Pokemon Rose Arc
by Demon1
Summary: I'm updating and revamping this story completely on my new site: HeleneAlexandra. Just putting this up so people know I'm not stealing my own work!
1. Chapter 1 Nija

**POKEMON ROSE ARC**

Chapter 1

Three hours, thirty-eight minutes, and a gaggle of seconds. Only a rough three and a half hours now.

Reclining back and folding her hands behind her head, insides squirming at the mounting excitement at what lay before her, the ten-year-old girl gazed into the heavens.

Pallet had always been a quiet, dull place, full of quiet, dull people. The girl couldn't imagine there being anything of importance that involved Pallet Town in all of history. Except, maybe, what was happening now.

The girl was familiar with pokemon—very, very familiar—so she knew even before the whole town was buzzing about it, that this year was Pallet's turn to start all the new pokemon trainers on their journeys. Indeed, for the last month or so people had been preparing for this night, buzzing around, re-painting their houses and cleaning out old bedrooms so visitors from Viridian, Cerulean, and even as far as Fuchsia and Saffron City would have places to stay while awaiting the following morning.

Now, they had arrived on this clear June night, and even at eight twenty-two in the evening, the girl could see as many as fifty people all outside, standing around, joking and laughing. It was strange to see so many people in this place.

Her mother often said that their town was rather like an artist's palette… a beautiful canvas upon which painters may mix their colors and began creating their life's masterpieces. But no matter how much the girl loved her mother (and her odd zeal for analogies and metaphors), she'd always feel the same. Her home was a cage, and a _tiny_ one at that. Only a few small, two-story houses… painted off-white with gray trimmings and cracked brown shingles on the rooftops, where the girl would spend hours and hours of her time, cloud-gazing and wishing that she could fly away on the back of a Fearow or Pidgeot, and start a journey of her own.

Some "palette" this was.

The two houses on this side of the town belonged to she and… Amaris. Her mother told her over and over that Amaris was a very nice young man, and that she should be kind to him… but the girl could find no reason in the world to be nice to _him_. Quite the contrary, she loathed him. He never showed the slightest sign of compassion for anything, and always had the air about him of someone who thought they were better than everyone else. She often times saw him throwing rocks at Pidgeys perched on the stone wall surrounding their town, and even though he'd made her promise never to tell a soul (with a little help from the ever-constant stream of blackmail he inexplicably seemed to have her under), he trapped and trained wild Ratatta out in the brush, something that was illegal for an underage trainer to do.

But besides Amaris, the girl knew a few others in the place. There was Marianne across the way who was seven, Mr. Watts who fished for a living by the ocean… and the strange group of people who lived in the massive building in front of which a peeling wooden sign read "POKEMON RESEARCH – PROFESSOR DEREK OAK." The real professor Oak didn't live there anymore (the girl wasn't sure he still lived at _all_), but the young, high-strung researcher who worked there now was Amaris' uncle. The man was a little… eccentric, but not in an entirely bad way. The girl supposed he must be brilliant if the famous Oak thought him fit to take over his research in Pallet.

The girl sighed and, hoisting herself down off the roof, crept back in through her window on the second floor. Hoping she hadn't made too much noise, she closed the shutters and threw herself down on the bed, which was in its usual state of disarray.

She couldn't stand it, only three hours! Oh sure, she'd have to wait seven more for the research facility to open so she could really reap the benefits of the day, but that wasn't the point. In three more hours she would be able to—officially—call herself a pokemon trainer.

"Sweetie?"

"Yeah, Mom?"

The girl's mother pushed the door open with her back and entered her room holding a tray with two steaming mugs of cocoa on it, and, tapping the door shut with her foot, set down the tray and turned to face her daughter.

Sporting golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, her mother was often mistaken for the girl's elder sister, since the two of them looked nothing alike. The girl had wondered why this was so for many years, until the previous one when her mother had felt she was old enough to know that she was adopted. The girl really had no problem with this, and she knew that this woman standing here with that "you-were-on-the-roof-again-weren't-you?" look was the only mom she'd ever need.

Still though, the girl was curious to meet her birth parents, and knew it would be something she'd have to track down when she was older.

But for now, such thoughts were far away, and as the girl grinned sheepishly and said "Hey mom…"

"How many times have I told you that it isn't safe up there?" her mother sighed, handing her daughter one of the mugs, an old one with a Santa hat adorned Charmander peering from it.

"Oh mo-o-om, come on…!" The girl said, bouncing in anticipation. "I'm gonna be flying up wa-a-ay high on my Pidgeot soon! I can't be afraid of my _roof_!"

Her mother laughed kindly and ruffled the girl's long black hair with one hand. "Not for a while, now. You still have to catch yourself a Pidgey and raise it properly before you'll be doing anything of the sort!"

The girl grinned. "Technicalities…"

They shared a moment of silence while quietly sipping from their cups.

"Hey Mom?" the girl asked, setting her now empty mug on her bedside table, only to have her mother lift it again to place a coaster down. The girl rolled her eyes in good humor before continuing, "Do you… do you think I'll be a good trainer? I mean, I don't know what I mean by "good" really, just like… I don't know, do you think…?"

Her mother smiled at her and chuckled softly. "Honey, I think you'll be an exceptional trainer. You've got the drive, and I know you'll treat your pokemon right… I'm sure they'll all just adore you, and that's one of the most important things there is to being good, and great." She leaned over to click off the lamp (which was, like everything else in the girls room, pokemon-oriented) on the bedside table. "But before you can be great, you need your sleep!"

The girl moaned out of habit, but inside she felt a lot better. Her mom always had a way of making her doubts vanish. "Oh… all right, but really, it's only nine…"

"ONLY nine? I thought you said you were going to bed at eight thirty so you could be up early tomorrow, young lady."

"Oh yeah… that's right…" the girl muttered, a sudden yawn crippling her sentence. "But 'm not tired…" she protested, curling up under the covers as her mom tucked them in around her feet.

"Goodnight, Nija"

"Night, Mom…"

---------

Nija wasn't really sure when she'd dosed off, but she did know that her mother had been right about how going to sleep early would mean she would rise earlier than she needed to. Her eyes were open at 5:15, her clothes assembled pell-mell at 5:20, and she was dropping out of her window into the bushes below at 5:22, silently thanking her mom for keeping them so bouncy and lush with her obsessive gardening.

Nija wasn't really sure what the point of being up so early was, but she knew she certainly wouldn't be able to sleep. Maybe a walk around the town was what she needed to calm down.

She passed by Amaris' house (shot it a glare), and continued past it, keeping to the perimeter with one hand trailing on the wall and one hand in her pocket. She saw a few of her neighbors entering the lighted Pokemon Research Center and waved. She wished she could get in there early too, but the people in there were probably only making last minute arrangements for the big day.

She was still looking at the research building when her arm collided with something leaning against the wall.

Well, more like some_one_. None other than Amaris, sporting his trademark look of cool disinterest, barred her way. Nija, who had stopped walking, now took her hand from the wall and stepped past him, replaced it, and began to continue on her way.

"Why do you _do_ that?" came the sneering voice. Nija stopped, already irritated. There was nothing like a little run in with that insufferable brat to get her day started on the wrong foot.

"Do _what_?"

"That," Amaris continued, pushing off against the wood to stand up again. "Touch the wall while you're walking."

"… None of your business."

Amaris rolled his eyes and called her something like "obsessive-compulsive." Then he asked her something that served as a kick to the head.

"What pokemon are you gonna choose for your starter?"

After a moment of shocked silence, Nija answered "None of your _business_!" which she knew sounded exceedingly lame as an excuse for something she didn't have an answer to twice in a row.

Nija _had_ thought long and hard about what pokemon she wanted to start with, but she still really had no idea. She had sorta-decided on a Bulbasaur, which everyone said was the best thing for a beginner, then kinda-decided on a Squirtle, which she knew grew up to be the formidable Blastoise, and then maybe-decided on a Charmander, just because she thought that fire pokemon were just plain awesome, and hard to come by.

In the end she'd decided on Squirtle, and had tried her very best to stick to that judgment. But for some reason, now that the question had come from Amaris, all certainty she had had about her decision crumbled away and she was left faltering, torn equally between three opposing forces once again. Back to square one.

Amaris could tell that she had no idea what she was going to choose. Nija could tell from the way the smirk grew on his face. She honestly wondered at times if he could smell fear. "Don't tell me the pokeholic Nija hasn't thought about which one to start with!" he laughed aloud and slapped the wall with his hand. "I don't believe it… you know, if you don't tell them what pokemon you want the _second_ it's your turn, they kick you out till everyone else has gone and you get whatever reject is left over…"

Nija fought internally to keep a look of horror from spreading across her face. She wouldn't give Amaris the satisfaction. Surely they wouldn't do that… he was just trying to scare her… wasn't he?

"I'd get to it if I were you… you only have forty-five minutes before you have to make the most important decision of your life! Tick-tock…" and with that said, Amaris strolled to the research building, one hand in his pocket, and swung the door open, letting himself in.

Nija took perhaps a nanosecond to be bitterly jealous of Amaris' privileges as the nephew of the head of the building, before she turned and dashed back towards her house. She had some pokemon research of her own to do…

---------

"Bulbasaur, a plant type which gives it an automatic advantage over rock and water types, also evolves earlier, giving it the reputation as a beginner's best friend…"

Bulbasaur… Bulbasaur sounded good, actually… if Nija took things the conventional way, she would be up against the leader of Pewter City and Cerulean City's gyms first, and a plant type might be just what she needed to even SURVIVE them… But then again… did she really want to choose her partner based only what would be the easy way out?

Nija let her head fall to the desk. She was doomed, plain and simple. Already she'd depleted her formidable collection of research books. She knew that she couldn't waste any time feeling sorry for herself, but she wished desperately that there were three Nija Ikira's, one for each starter pokemon.

Lifting her head from the pages of her last hope, the morning sun flashed off the face of her wall-mounted clock, and after blinking the light spot from her eyes, Nija caught sight of the time.

"OH MY GOD--!"

Falling all over herself, Nija knocking over her chair in the process of scrambling to the window. She leapt out into the outside world and scraped both her knees and palms on the rougher-than-she-would-have-liked landing. Pulling herself up and half-limping-half-sprinting the rest of the way around the corner of the Research building, Nija groaned as she caught sight of the formidable line that had materialized.

Seven o' five. She was late.

Groaning again and taking her place in the back of the line the curled straight back to the opposing wall of Pallet, Nija caught sight of Amaris exiting the door. He had, of course, been the first to get his pokemon. The sight of the red and white ball in his hand filled her with a flustered anger that forced her to look down and away as he passed her, smirking and tossing it in the air for effect.


	2. Chapter 2 Jason

Chapter 2

Jason Fremont rolled over and right out of bed, hitting his head on something lying on the floor, and tried desperately to pull the blankets down over his face before he realized that morning light was pouring in through the window.

In under a second he was up and at the sill, peering out into the over-bright sunrise to see Pallet Town. Although it was only barely six thirty, the place was buzzing with as much activity as most places had around noon.

There was a knock at the door, and Jason suddenly realized that he had no pants.

"UHH—Hold on!" he shouted, grabbing his mis-matched cargo jeans and yanking them halfway on, then, realizing that his belt was on the other side of the room, attempted to bunny hop over to them.

This proved unsuccessful as he tripped over the tangled heap of sheets on the ground and fell flat on his face.

The door opened a crack. "Hello there? Jason, right? Are you okay in there? You said you wanted to be woken up at six thirty, right…?" an unsure female voice inquired.

"Don't come in! And yeah, I'm up, thank you very much ma'am!" Jason shouted from his face-down position. Sighing in relief as the door clicked shut again, he pulled himself up and got properly dressed.

Jason didn't have a whole lot of stuff with him, and he could see that his mom, who had accompanied him on the journey from Saffron, had already packed them. Marveling at his mother's uncanny ability to slip into his room and mess around with his things unnoticed, he grabbed his backpack and dashed out the door and down the stairs into the kitchen of the home he was staying in.

"Ah, good morning Jason," his mother said, stepping through the threshold and closing the rickety screen door behind her. Jason's mother, Sabrina, was the leader of the Saffron City pokemon gym, but had insisted on taking time off from her job to see to it that her son got down there safely. Many people had snapped their eyes to Sabrina and let their jaws fall open, not bothering to hide their shock and amazement, but she gave off the air of one who should not be approached for small talk. Now, however, she smiled slightly at her son and placed a hand on his blond-dyed-green head, saying, "Do you want anything to eat?"

"Mooom, my haiiir…" Jason moaned, ducking under her arm and grinning. "Naw, I'm not hungry! Can I go? _Please_?"

Sabrina looked him over solemnly, and after regarding him carefully, said "Very well. I'll meet you outside in a half an hour…"

"YES! Thank you, mom, _thank you_!" he shouted, throwing a hug around her waist and darting for the door.

"Oh, and Jason…" Sabrina continued after a second. He could tell the words on her tongue were _Be careful_, the ever-constant mantra she seemed to chant at him. Instead, her look of somber affection melted into a smile. "Good luck."

---------

Jason slid into line, pleased that he was about tenth from first. There were maybe a hundred new trainers here altogether, and Jason felt exceedingly lucky to be one of them. his mother had almost not let him come to Pallet this year, but after MUCH heavy persuasion on Jason's part, he had been allowed to.

Jason groaned as the first guy came out of the building. The boy locked eyes with him for a second and gave him a none-too-friendly scowl, before tossing his pokeball in the air and heading off. Jason thought that looked a lot like what's-his-name, the supposed son or nephew of the guy who ran the Research center he was about to enter. Mar… Mar-something.

Jason felt eyes on the back of his head, and, turning around to scope out the people behind him, wasn't surprised to see the silhouette of his mother watching him from the window of the house he'd just left. The owner of the house was talking animatedly to her, waving her arms in the air, and although his mother was nodding and answering with one or two words, Jason knew that she wasn't paying the slightest attention to her. Sabrina's eyes kept flashing to the left and right of Jason, carefully calculating each person and their level of threat to her son. Jason waved at her, and, having been caught in the act, Sabrina waved back before turning her attentions (with much effort) back to the conversation she was pretending to have.

Jason knew perfectly well why his mother was so overly protective… and the reason wasn't at all a bad one. Jason's father was no doubt on the look out for his second son, and would send "someone" to take Jason to him upon a moments notice.

He shook out his head. No need to think about that stuff now. He was gonna get his first pokemon, his very first pokemon, in a few mere moments!

It seemed like forever and a day had passed before it was at last Jason's turn. He practically ran through the doors, and even as they were still swinging from his entrance, he was mumbling "Jason Fremont" in passing to the scientist at the desk who was taking names, and burst in through the double doors into the back of the lab.

"Hello!" Jason shouted, skidding to a halt in front of a tall, auburn haired man and leaning over to catch his breath.

"Well, hello there!" the man said with a laugh, putting down the brown clipboard he'd been poring over and straightening his spectacles. "And your name is…?"

"Ja… Jason Fremont, sir!" he replied, standing up.

"Well, Jason… which pokemon will you be choosing to start off your journey?"

Jason closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. "… Bulbasaur!"

"Bulbasaur it is, then." The professor said smilingly. Jason felt like the entire world had been spinning round and round since he'd set foot into this place, and suddenly something fell into his palm. Red and white metal with a chromed shine, three and a half inches in diameter, sealed air tight with a tiny round aiming laser set into the button in the front, which was a new feature to the fabulous device that held the creature that was now his: a pokeball.

The reassuring weight in his hands made Jason feel as if he'd just been crowned Supreme Ruler of the Universe. All his hopes and dreams resided somewhere within the amazing mechanism cupped in his palms now, tingling, waiting for him to sharpen it's content's skills to the best they could be. Waiting for him to be great.

Jason wanted to start this very second, now, _yesterday_. He was dashing out the door when the researcher's arm snagged the back of his orange tank top and held him sternly back, effectively gagging him. Jason squirmed and struggled and looked up through his mass of green and gold hair at him, who frowned in a paternal way.

"You… you are Surge's son, aren't you?"

Jason's eyes fell from the man's face to the floor at once. "Erm—yeah, yeah… that's me…" His euphoric bubble suddenly seemed to have developed a hole, and he could feel his pounding heart start to slow down. It was never good when someone made the connection between he and his father.

"Now see here, Jason, was it?" the man began, relinquishing the grip on his arm. "I want you to remember something, always." Jason was paying full attention now, not so distracted by the pokeball in his hand, which suddenly felt a lot heavier under the stern stare of the professor. "There are a lot of ways to become great, Jason… a lot of different paths you can take… but not all of the quickest paths are the best ones. The more time you spend with your team, the stronger you'll become… and there's a big difference between strength and power."

"Huh…?" Jason asked, not quite sure what he meant.

The professor smiled at him, and silently shook his head. "Ahh… you don't think on that right now, just remember it, alright?"

Jason managed a smile again. "A… Alright, sir." He couldn't help noticing that the professor's strange advice had been given after he realized who Jason was. For a split second, Jason frowned, wondering if this man perhaps knew something about his family… if he would know about—

"Well, I don't want to keep you!" the professor said with a laugh in his tone, and he cupped Jason on the shoulder and gave him a little push towards the door. Whatever Jason had been thinking, it was gone. "You take good care of that pokemon now!"

Jason nodded, his energy suddenly back. "I will, sir. And thank you!"

And, clutching his prize close to his chest, he sprinted back out through the door.


	3. Chapter 3 Azrael

Chapter 3

Azrael snaked her way through the underbrush, pokeball in hand. It was still too early for most people to be awake, barely even five o' clock in the morning, but she had already been up for half an hour and had tuned out the ache in her limbs. She was still a little sore from training yesterday, but she was grateful for the slow burning in her muscles; it meant she was improving.

Not many people knew—or cared—that pokemon catching was at it's best in the early morning. It wasn't because that was when all the pokemon came out, though. The problem with catching in the mid-day was (as with most things) largely a human one.

Ignorant trainers blundering around in the grass, ignorant vacationers spreading their checked blankets out and having a thousand picnics a day, ignorant people gabbing as loud as they could and making a truly good catch near impossible.

No, Azrael preferred to do her work by the palest of the pale dawns.

There was a noise above her, just the slightest of the rustling branches. Something that was gone as quickly as it had come, almost a mirage. Something that most amateur trainers would ignore.

She leapt back and jammed down the button on the pokeball in her hand. A haze of red light formed around a patch of earth, and the next moment her Eevee was there, ears back, brown eyes fixed as if by instinct on the shadow in the trees above, which had been shocked into a flurry of movement.

"Sand-Attack." Azrael gave the order along with a hand sign: four fingers extended to the figure. This Eevee was still a little young, so she needed to firmly establish the orders and signals that some of her older ones new by heart. As it grew used to the inflection of her voice for each command, she would slowly be able to wean it off of even the hand signals until she and it could literally predict the other's next move.

Eevee shoved forth a flurry of dirt and rocks into the air, and a second later the thing—a Murkrow, it turned out to be—was sailing through the air and cawing loudly, dive bombing Eevee in a haphazard way.

"Tackle!" Two fingers held together and pointed straight at the crazed Murkrow.

In a matter of moments the pokemon was weakened on the floor, fluttering and cawing vengefully. Azrael kneeled down by it and tapped a free pokeball to its beak. A flash of light engulfed the pokemon, and after the button flashed and trembled for a few moments it was still.

Straightening up and stroking Eevee's head in congratulations, Azrael looked to the east and saw (with a little disappointment) that the sun was rising. She wouldn't be able to do any more _real_ catching, so with a resigned sigh, she started the long path back to her home, where her mom, no doubt, was still catching some sleep.

Oh well, she thought. There were other kinds of training to do in the day.

---------

Azrael pushed the back door of her house open and stepped into the poorly-lit kitchen. The floor was freezing the way it usually was in the absence of the sun, but after walking around for a while, her feet got used to it. Pulling out a pot and filling it with water, she thought on the Murkrow in her pocket now. She was dedicated to training dark or ghost type pokemon, so the Murkrow would be right at home in her arsenal. However, she had the strangest feeling that she wouldn't be able to train the bird as easily as she had learned to train Eevee. She and Eevee had been together for years prior to her official registration as a Junior pokemon trainer, so their bond had already been established and Eevee was quite eager to learn and help her out.

This new pokemon, however, would be the second one she'd caught wild and tried to train. Azrael didn't enjoy the slow, painstaking process of gaining the trust of the pokemon she'd snatched from their homes in the wild… and so far the Sneazel she'd caught was only just beginning to grudgingly accept it's place in her belt. Now the new addition would double the difficulty of her training sessions.

Having placed the now-full pot on the stove, Azrael turned up the old fashioned gas burner and left the water to its business. Padding down the hall and out into the living room, she found her mother where she had expected; slouched over on the couch, a newspaper open on the table in front of her, sound asleep.

Azrael knew what was the only kind of news her mother read, but she leaned over to get a look at the heading of the article none-the-less.

"NEW LEADS FOUND TO THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISSING FUCHSIA CITY GYM LEADER KOGA"

Azrael slanted her eyes and shut the page. The news teams _always_ thought they had a "new lead to the whereabouts of missing Fuchsia City Gym Leader Koga", but they were always, _always_ wrong. Azrael knew that if Koga wanted to be found, he would have shown himself by now. No, he was probably never going back to his city and job.

Or his wife and daughter.

Suddenly filled with a horrible bitterness, Azrael closed her eyes tightly shut. She was shocked that she was allowing herself to get worked up about a stupid headline in the stupid paper made by stupid civilians who thought they could find the man that no one, not the police or detective services, could find. It just wasn't worth blowing a vein over; at least, not yet anyway.

Azrael chucked the paper in the trash can, knowing that when her mother awoke to find it gone, she would be upset for a while, but eventually would agree that the whole thing sounded bogus anyway. And then she'd probably want some tea, which brought Azrael's attentions back to the boiling pot on the stove.

Taking the water off the heat and turning the flame back down, she removed two chipped mugs from their pegs on the walls, and filled them with the steaming fluid. She reached up to pull out the old-fashioned tea strainer and tin of chamomile, prying the lid off and letting the pungent scent fill the room. Her mother would eventually catch a whiff of the aroma and return from the land of the dead. In the meantime, she had something to check out.

---------

If Azrael remembered correctly, Pallet town was the place to be today. Ten-year-olds from all over the world would be gathered there, yelling and shouting about their new pokemon, and maybe even trying to fight each other already.

Azrael was thirteen now, past the minimal age to get a starter. She could have conceivably picked one up when she turned ten, but she hadn't really wanted to. Starter pokemon were for people who wanted to become great, wanted to hone their skills and attempt to attain the unattainable; the title Pokemon Master.

No, that wasn't Azrael's forte. She was quite happy to train only one type and hopefully become an expert on that chosen kind. Her highest ambition would be to get a gym of her own someday… but she knew they didn't hand those out like candy. If she wanted to be known as the _best_ of her chosen path, she had to be serious as hell in her training, never letting up or taking too long to relax and goof off. That was how her father had become a gym leader; pure, hard training until no one could deny how much his hard work had brought him above and beyond every other person aiming to be the top poison pokemon trainer.

If there was only one thing Azrael wanted to attain from her father, it was that drive.

Sure enough, as she crept closer to Pallet's boundaries, happy babble and shouts floated through the morning to her. Azrael didn't have to walk long to reach this place; her own home was in a secluded alcove not far from Viridian Forest, a place that her family had chosen for its removal from the distractions of the cities. However, if they needed to, they could still walk to the nearest town to get food supplies and such, which was why the walk had taken Azrael maybe fifteen minutes at the most.

Kids were darting around and trying to sneak out into the tall grasses, sometimes held back by a parent, but most of the time allowed to creep outside. There was only so much a parent could do once their kid was an official trainer; the old "You don't have a pokemon, you'll get attacked by the wild ones!" excuse obviously wouldn't work anymore.

Azrael normally didn't keep up with the ritual of the new trainers and such… but this year could be different. She was on the lookout for something, something she had been on the lookout for almost as long as word from her father.

Blake might, just might, be out here.

Sure, it was unlikely. But she wouldn't be able to sleep ever again if she didn't at least check. Blake was nine now, or maybe ten… she couldn't remember, and she didn't want to ask her mother about such a delicate topic. But her half-brother had been extremely important to her, and when his father Falkner had taken him to live in Azalea town with him, Azrael had been furious. She had been six, and Blake three at the time, so she wasn't even sure if he would remember her… but she would _not_ allow the two of them to be separated forever.

At last, the new trainers were allowed to leave Pallet town. Tears and hugs and kisses were suddenly absolutely everywhere, and Azrael sunk behind the tree she was standing by. It seemed to take a lifetime for the parents that were there to let their kids leave, but the ones who were there without parents for whatever reason were already on their way out. Azrael thought if Blake was here, he'd most likely be alone, since Falkner was a gym leader as well, and was most likely extremely busy.

Boy with brown hair and a red cap… no. Girl, girl, girl… no, definitely not. Black haired boy… no, his skin coloring was too dark…

Azrael was suddenly aware that she wasn't at all sure _what_ she would do if she saw her brother. Would she dart out from behind her tree and snatch him up? Would she have to follow him a distance until he was alone? Would he even know who she was…?

Girl, boy with red hair, girl, boy with really, really weird green and blonde hair, girl, boy with brown spiked hair and a smug look, girl… Azrael's eyes were working overtime now, darting from face to face to face, searching long and hard for a pair of darkest brown eyes, black hair with tufts of strange silvery gray by the bangs, pale skin like her own…

But no. The last kids were leaving now, tossing their pokeballs in the air and pushing each other around. A few stragglers moseyed out after them, and then there was no one for a very long time other than the parents huddled by the door watching their young trainers start off into the world. And some time after that, there wasn't even the parents anymore as they each started off on their long ways home.

Azrael felt like something heavy that had been temporarily lifted from her stomach during her frantic search of the crowd had been replaced with a thud. She hadn't _really_ expected to see him there… maybe he was still nine after all, and wouldn't come till next year, when the event would be hosted by Viridian City.

She could wait, though. Pushing off from the tree and turning to walk the path back to her home, Azrael found herself fiddling with the chain of her necklace, which was almost always tucked in her shirt.

Yes, she would wait as long as it took for her family to be whole again.


	4. Chapter 4 Visora

Chapter 4

Sitting at a two-person table in a shabby little restaurant, gazing absently out the window, Visora tried to remember how long it would take to reach the next town, but found that her thoughts kept wandering back to wishing that she had something other than soup to eat.

Visora wasn't really sure what kind of soup it was, but it didn't look appetizing. Little chunks of meat floated here and there, and dissolved bits of lettuce stuck miserably to the sides of the chipped bowl. She dipped her finger in the broth. It was cold.

Across from her, however, Elva devoured her own "breakfast" with an enviable gusto. Visora knew that it was because Elva had spent much of her time the night before swimming laps by the lake's edge and had probably worked up a hearty appetite, but it was still lamentable that her half sister could stand to eat such things.

Visora stood up. "When you're done, meet me outside, okay? I was thinking that we could go look for some stronger practice out in the denser forest today."

"Mmm-hmm!" Elva responded from behind her bowl, opening one blue eye to acknowledge her.

Visora stood up, wiped the crumbs from Elva's toast compulsively off the table, and headed out the door to the resentful stare of the cook in the back.

It was still kind of early in the morning, around seven, but since it was June the sun was already feebly shining over the eastern mountain ranges. Saffron City was a nice place for visiting, but Visora liked it for a different reason. Saffron was essentially the mid-point of Kanto, and if she and Elva were here, they could head out to any one of four different towns and routes to capture or train pokemon; Cerulean to the north, Vermillion to the South, Lavender to the East and Celadon to the West.

She and her sister had already been to Cerulean and Celadon; they wouldn't need to return there in any hurry. Vermillion was always an option, but for some reason Visora felt inclined to trek the lonely path to Lavender town. She had heard that the pokemon tower there was severely haunted; which usually just meant that there were tough pokemon in the area. Something that she needed more of.

Elva exited the diner then, wiping her washed hands on her jeans, and, spotting her sibling, waved energetically and bounded over. It was time to head off.

---------

Branches. Always with the branches. Visora swatted away what felt like the thousandth bramble as it reached desperately for her already marred and scratched face. Heaving a sigh, she stomped quickly through more underbrush, still looking for a clearing. She didn't care how big it was, so long as it was a clearing.

Perhaps this route hadn't been as good an idea as it had seemed before. Visora had had _no_ idea that the unconventional path to Lavender would be so… unconventional.

Elva bounced happily behind her, every so often exclaiming as she thought she saw a place to sit, only to take it back a moment later and confirm that it was just "a kind of flat looking bush."

The two sisters had started out into the underbrush about half an hour after Elva had come out of the diner. It was one in the afternoon now, and there was no sign of rest–or pokemon–anywhere.

Visora sighed again. She knew that all this "roughing it" would pay off tremendously if, _if_, they found any pokemon here to battle. In theory, the deeper one got into the forests or caves, the stronger the wild pokemon would be, and the more their own teams would learn from the experience of battling them.

Elva, who was SOMEHOW undaunted by all of this, had now taken up the most annoying practice of jumping up and down to see over Visora's red haired head into the brambles that lay before them.

"Ooh! Ooh! Sis, I think—I see—one!" she shouted enthusiastically, voice distorted from jumping.

"Great," Visora said, half-listening. She could have sworn she heard—

Visora didn't even get a chance to finish her thought, for they were interrupted by an explosive snapping noise, the sound of air being cut by something very fast, a shrill scream from Elva, and suddenly something crashed down all around Visora.

Her first instinct was to shout like her sister, but Visora bit down on her tongue. She spun around to see her sister hanging by an ankle from a tree, desperately shoving her shirt down into her jeans, as it was flying up over her face.

Visora herself was in a cage of some sort, makeshift, obviously. She reached instinctively for the bars to lift it off over her head, but halted when she saw the nasty, two inch long razor edged barbs lining everything. The structure had no roof, but the walls were around eight feet high, enough to stop her from trying to climb out unless she wanted to get lacerated.

"Hey 'Sora?" Elva started uncertainly from above her, voice distorted and shaky. "Who do you think made these things?"

"Shhhh…!" Visora hissed angrily. "Be quiet. Maybe they didn't hear us--"

However, a rustling in the bushes to their left said otherwise.

A boy emerged from the line of trees a moment later, looking bewildered and lost.

Visora took in his features: long black hair held back in a ponytail, save for one stubborn looking lock that fell over a forehead of smooth, darkly tanned skin and a strong jaw, leading down to a sculpted collarbone. He wore no shirt beneath a thick gray mountaineering vest, odd for their climate. The boy's eyes were a warm shade of brown reminiscent of chocolate, and the fluid way he moved through the brush, blinked benignly at her, and then her sister, spoke of someone who was usually very calm and dealt with stress well.

"Um… hello there," the boy said conversationally, as if coming across people hanging upside down from trees and clamped under makeshift cages was an everyday occurrence. "You wouldn't happen to be with Team Rocket, would you?"

"Gav!" a voice hissed before Visora could open her mouth to retort. "You can't just go around asking that!"

A second figure, female, stepped into Visora's line of vision from the bushes opposite of the boy, Gav. Visora instantly figured that the girl and boy _had_ to be siblings… they both shared the same long, silky black hair (although the girl's was styled in a flyaway, longer manner), the same bronzed skin and somewhat short-fingered hands, and—Visora thought that her eyes must be deceiving her—their eyes looked very similar in color… although the new girl's appeared to be blood _red_.

She supposed it must be her shirt. The girl was adorned in a cherry red t-shirt, something that would have made the inventor of camouflage clothing roll over in their grave.

But the boy was speaking now, so Visora cut off further thought and paid attention to their captors, for she now realized that these were the people who set up the damned traps. If they weren't, surely they'd be making a little more fuss about finding two girls caught in them.

"Oh, come on Ciara," laughed Gav in a soft rumble. "You overestimate TR's intelligence. I'll bet my life that if these two really WERE with the rockets," he jabbed either thumb at Visora and Elva respectively, "that they'd answer with 'uh, yeah! We sure are with Team Rocket—hey, how'd you know?'"

Ciara gave an appreciative snort and said, "Still. They may breed a new set of SMART Rockets now-a-days, you never know."

Gav however, was already reaching up and yanking at a rope and pulley attached to a tree and the top of Visora's cage, which raised it a few feet and allowed her to crawl out from underneath it. "Let her down, will you Ci?" he addressed the girl and pointed at the lazily swinging Elva.

He gained a few brownie points as he extended his hand to help Visora up, and said in an apologetic tone, "I'm so sorry… are you alright, miss?"


	5. Chapter 5 Nija

Chapter 5

It was roughly an hour later that a very hot, very frustrated Nija pulled her way through the threshold to the Pokemon Research Facility. She felt like she could have cried in frustration… if she had enough energy to. The sharp contrast the cold building gave to her fevered brow was welcomed with open arms.

She made her way slowly back to the rear of the building, dragging her feet all the way. Books lined the shelves, and Nija thought vaguely that she really didn't have as many sources of pokemon information as she thought she had. The sheer mass of all the data here probably would have enabled Nija to find out exactly what temperature a Caterpie would evolve at, or what day of the week was most likely for a Pikachu to be in a bad mood.

When she shoved the double doors at the back of the lab open and trudged in, she wasn't all that surprised to see that Professor Drake was reading a newspaper with his feet propped up on his desk. Nija was five minutes over the time assigned for the closure of the event, and had had to haggle with the man at the door to get in. No doubt the professor thought that every new trainer had already been helped.

"Excuse me, sir…?" she began, taking quick notice of the waver in her voice and attempting to stamp it out.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, shoving his feet to the floor with a loud thud and tossing his newspaper aside while getting up. "I'm sorry there, Nija… I didn't see you."

Nija was too happy at being acknowledged to immediately take in how the man had addressed her. "Er… 'scuse me for asking, sir, but… how do you know my name?"

"Ah… Amaris talks about you all the time."

Nija blinked for a couple of seconds. Why in the world would Amaris talk to his uncle about her? Probably to tell him what a dope she was….

Scowling at the thought, she said "Yeah… we hang out together, sometimes."

"That's good, Amaris doesn't have enough friends…" The man said smilingly, straightening his glasses (whilst Nija gagged at being called the insufferable brat's buddy), and heading over to the table especially designed for holding the remaining twelve pokeballs. Nija was overwhelmed with relief that at least Amaris had been wrong about the shortage of leftover pokemon.

"Well, it looks like we've got more than enough for you to choose from," Professor Drake said. "Which one will it be?"

Nija closed her eyes and took a deep breath. While waiting outside in the unbelievably long line that never seemed to end, she had given this a lot of thought. Bulbasaur was out of the question; she didn't want people to see her as someone who wanted to get off easy. Squirtle, too, was out… Nija didn't specialize in water _anything_, being a rather weak swimmer. The responsibility of starting off with a water-oriented pokemon would assure her a spot in the obituaries: "Young trainer drowned off the coast of Pallet." That left by matter of deduction…

"Charmander." She said, opening her eyes and releasing her mind from the clamp of steel that had settled around it since that morning.

Professor Drake nodded thoughtfully. "Odd choice, very difficult indeed…" he grinned slightly and pulled the ball up from its dip in the white metal. "But I suppose that's why you chose it? Looking for a challenge… that's the mark of a good trainer to be." He dropped the pokemon into her waiting hands, and they flew to her chest eagerly, cupping the prize with a fierce happiness. All of Nija's exhaustion was gone.

"Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU PROFESSOR!" She shouted, spinning on the spot and holding the pokeball up to the fluorescent lighting.

Professor Drake was considering her with a thoughtful expression. "You know, Nija… you remind me of a young boy I had in here earlier today… maybe you two will meet up some time, I think you'd be fast friends."

At the time, the words had little consequence to Nija, who was too preoccupied with the wonder of her newfound power as a trainer. She said something along the lines of "Yeah, okay!" as she started for the door.

"Good luck, Nija. Don't forget Pallet, now…" he called down the hallway that she was dashing down at top speed, the swinging of the double doors barely allowing his parting words to find their destination.

---------

Crashing through the tall grass, pokeball in hand, spine tingling, Nija was completely set on her goal: her first encounter with a wild pokemon while well armed with her brand-new friend.

The stretch of land between Pallet Town and Viridian City was pretty formidable, but not unbearably so… Nija figured if she walked for about a half hour straight that she would be able to wind along the path formed by travelers and get to her destination in good time with the other trainers. But haste wasn't her concern at the moment; she wanted to loiter around the unbeaten paths a while and get used to her pokemon before encountering one of her fellow new trainers—or worse, Amaris—in order to be prepared for any potential battles.

Nija always found it interesting how the hundreds of new trainers could manage to move off in a huge pack for the first day or two of their journey, before straggling off or racing ahead and never encountering one another again. It was common knowledge that after the first week of journeying, the only trainers who stayed with each other were the ones who did so intentionally, by rooming together and planning their days ahead. Everyone else went off their own separate ways in spite of the fact that Kanto wasn't really all _that_ huge. Nija supposed that with so much to do, though, her homeland was just as easy to get lost in as any winding desert.

There was a rustle behind her, and without stopping to think first, Nija spun straight around and cried "HAH!" She was in the process of thrusting her arm forward to release Charmander when she realized what the source of the noise was.

Speak of the devil, a set of sarcastic teal eyes stared back at her own from behind stray golden-brown bangs. "Fancy meeting you here," Amaris said.

"Yeah, I'll bet," Nija shot back, turning her back on him and pouting at having almost tried to "capture" her enemy.

"You act like I _wanted_ to meet you out here," he retorted coolly, and she could hear the indifferent shrug in his voice. "I'm just out here for some experience… and now that you're here, I can get some easy. Let's fight."

She whipped around and was in the process of yelling at him when he clicked the button on his pokeball, aiming it at the ground between them. Nija's words died in her throat as she watched the red light form a sketchy shape. It almost hurt her eyes to comprehend the technological wonder they were beholding.

Replacing the light stood a small turquoise creature with large, intelligent blue eyes and a shining brown shell set to its back.

Squirtle. Water type, giving it an automatic advantage to her fire type. Of _course_.

"Well?" Amaris asked, smirking and crossing his arms. "You gonna show me yours?"

"_Yeah_," she spat, fumbling with her pokeball and stabbing at the button, heart pounding. This would be the first time that she would see her pokemon in action. She wished dully that it hadn't been under the watchful gaze of Amaris.

Red flooded her vision once more, and to Nija's surprise, she could feel a small shift in the energy of the pokeball in her hand. It wasn't a large one, and she probably wouldn't have even noticed it if she hadn't been so wound up. But as the light poured forth and began to outline Charmander, Nija felt the pokeball… deflate, somehow, as if it were becoming no more magical than any old hunk of metal. The wonder she'd felt when first receiving it was being transferred out into the creature materializing before her eyes.

Orange, was the first thing Nija thought. Of course she'd seen a Charmander before—in her picture books and on TV occasionally—but nothing could have prepared her for the vivid colors and reality of the creature before her. The pokemon looked around it slowly, taking in the trees and grass and sky—then turned to face Nija.

Nija's eyes widened slightly at the pair of dazzling teal eyes that met hers. A wave of regret washed over her as she realized that they were the precise shade of Amaris'. That thought was pushed out of her mind when the pokemon whipped around to face the Squirtle in front of it, rumbling a hiss under its breath. The tail flame crackled angrily, spitting embers out to either side. Nija fought against the urge to flinch as a char hit her sneaker. Lifting her gaze to Amaris once again, she grinned.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" The sentence almost died midway as Nija took in Amaris' silent chuckling and token sneer of superiority. "What are you _laughing_ at!"

"Oh, nothing. It just _figures_ that you'd make the most retarded choice you could possibly make," he said, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes. "Do you have _any_ idea how _impossible_ it is to deal with fire types? Especially as a newbie. And the time you'll have trying to _survive_ against Pewter City's leader!"

Amaris was practically howling with laughter now, slapping his knee and genuinely taking pleasure from the bewildered and taken aback look on Nija's face. Quick to recover, she snapped back "Oh, yeah? Well, you shouldn't talk! Water types aren't that tough, but fire types are one of the strongest there are if they're trained right!"

"_If_ they're trained right," Amaris repeated, sneering now, all traces of laughter gone. "And we all know that _you_ won't even come _close_ to filling that requirement."

"That's it!" Nija spat, firming her stance and whipping her long hair back over her shoulder. "Stop talking and start backing yourself up, you brat!"

"My pleasure," Amaris answered coolly. Nija waited, balanced tensely on the knife's edge of an emotional explosion for Amaris to strike. When he did nothing, she fixed him with an accusatory glare. "Ladies first," he said simply, slipping his hands into his pockets.

This gesture of smug overconfidence fueled the fire that Nija had been trying to control, and all at once she exploded. "Fine! Charmander!" the pokemon fixed her with an unwavering stare. "Scratch attack!"

There was a faltering moment of hesitation where Nija was terrified that Charmander wouldn't obey. After those few seconds, though, the pokemon fixed that stare onto Squirtle and, without any warning, leapt forward and slashed wildly at the small turtle's exposed underbelly. Angry red marks appeared on the cream-yellow skin.

Nija crowed in triumph as Charmander leapt back and flicked its tail from side to side in a gesture of what looked like contempt.

Amaris was unimpressed. "Squirtle, show it what a _real_ attack looks like. Tackle!"

Without that moment's hesitation that Nija's Charmander had displayed, the turtle righted itself and slammed full-force into the lizard. The two went sailing, and Nija thought for a wild moment that they would slam into the nearby tree. They merely skidded to a painful-looking halt inches before it, with Squirtle riding Charmander like a surfboard, a display of show-offish bravado that reminded Nija instantly of the pokemon's smug master a few feet away.

Charmander was livid. Without waiting for Nija's next command (which would have been scratch again, anyway) it leapt forward and scratched viciously at the turtle. And didn't _stop_.

"Charmander!" Nija shouted, appalled at her pokemon's lack of control. "Stop it, stop it, that's cheating! Charmander!"

Amaris scowled. "Can't you control your bloody pokemon, woman?" he snapped, before turning his attention back to the fray. "Squirtle, tackle it again! Let's _end_ this sad excuse for a battle!"

Squirtle was more than happy to oblige. Cocking its head back and ramming Charmander ruthlessly into the tree, Nija could feel as Charmander's health declined steadily to an abysmally low amount. Wondering wildly why she didn't sense her pokemon's growing weakness before this, she snapped the empty pokeball off her belt and said, "Return," in what she tried not to show as a defeated voice.

Red light engulfed the pokemon, but right before its form vanished completely into the digitized haze, teal eyes sharply met her own again, as if saying, _I could have won if you'd just let me!_

Nija could have sworn she was imagining it, but didn't have time to think on it. Charmander vanished into the ball, and Nija realized—with a sinking sensation in her gut—that she'd just had, and lost, her very first pokemon battle.

"That was _pathetic,_" Amaris said, frowning at Squirtle as he muttered, "Return." Nija knew she was talking about her ability as a trainer, even though it sounded as if he was referring to her Charmander's performance.

Nija looked at him witheringly. She'd have explained that it was her first time even setting _eye_ on her pokemon, but didn't want him to know that he'd just marred her first moment with her new partner. Instead, she said, "Maybe if you hadn't been such a _jerk_, Charmander wouldn't have been so riled up at you and your Squirtle."

Amaris rolled his eyes in contempt. "As if he understands what we're saying! Nija, you don't _honestly_ believe that pokemon understand our language beyond the attacks we shout at them." It wasn't a question, but Nija answered it anyway.

"_Yes_, I happen to." She scowled at him. "You want to make something of it?"

Amaris shrugged and suddenly broke out into a sarcastic grin. "You'd better take the safe route back home and get my uncle to patch up your lizard for you. Wouldn't want you to get hurt out here with your only pokemon inches from unconsciousness, now."

With that, Amaris turned and started off down the path. Normally, Nija would have leapt up and demanded a rematch in the future, might have even run up to him, spun him around, and punched him square in the face, just to see that smugness fall for a moment. But for some reason, she couldn't muster up the strength to be angry anymore. All she could think of was her relationship with her new pokemon—and the undeniable problems they would have in the future if she couldn't get it to obey her.

Plopping down on a tree stump, Nija lightly tossed the ball back and forth between her hands, aware of the light tingle that she'd mistakenly thought of as "magical" earlier in the day. Now, it just seemed like the hum of one very angry pokemon buzzing about inside its entrapment, waiting impatiently for the next fight, and its next opportunity to utterly embarrass its trainer again.


	6. Chapter 6 Jason

Chapter 6

A muscle began twitching in Jason's temple as he surveyed the disobedient pokemon. He felt as though he'd tried every single method of motivation known to the modern trainer, and yet… still it sat, sound asleep, unwilling to move on a step further and not even allowing Jason to get close enough to carry it down the path to Pewter. Jason found that every time he went near the damned thing, it woke instantly and showered him in a hail of leaves as sharp and hard as shards of glass, or launched itself with all its might into his stomach with a tackle attack. Jason, cut and sore and nauseous, had ceased his attempts at going near Bulbasaur after that. Now he sat, brooding, thinking, and nursing a gash on his thumb, occasionally shooting surly glares over at the sleeping pokemon. This was _not_ his day.

Groaning and flopping backwards onto the gratefully cool grass, Jason gazed upward at the skies. They were blue, just like always, and stretched on forever, seeing and knowing all, tasting every bit of the world as they had been since the beginning of time. Jason longed to claim the world, to set foot on every inch of soil, dip into every stream and river, coast upon every breeze that beckoned him. He longed to wake up in the morning and realize that he was free to do anything and go anywhere, be anyone. He longed for the ever-distant taunt of freedom to settle and rest upon his heart. Jason's stomach gave a sick lurch whenever he _wasn't_ doing something, whenever he _wasn't_ out there, getting into trouble, meeting people, or having a grand adventure. He shuddered to think of all the things he was missing, laying here on his back and gazing idly up at the sky, doing nothing. He _hated_ doing nothing.

He wanted adventure, and he would be damned if one drowsy Bulbasaur was going to stop him from getting it. Climbing to his feet, he stalked over to the pokemon and stood over it, glowering down and blocking out the sun with his shadow, the one thing he knew plant pokemon hated. Sure enough, one red eye shot open and glared at him in a warning way. Jason scoffed.

"Get up, _now_!" he exclaimed, pointing a figure authoritatively in the direction of Pewter. "And go _that_ way!"

The pokemon stared him down, a slight growl rising in its throat.

"Dooon't you be giving me any of that," Jason said, kneeling down so as to be level with Bulbasaur. "You can rest _after_ we've beaten Brock! If we start out now, we can be at Pewter and kicking his butt before sundown!" Bulbasaur didn't look as though this idea thrilled him as much as it should have. Jason growled in frustration, grabbing tufts of his hair on his temples and yanking it. "Won't you do a _single_ thing I tell you to!" he shouted.

"It won't _ever_ listen to you if you talk to it that way," said a cheery voice from behind him. Jason gave a start and spun around—a little too fast, and landed unceremoniously on his backside.

Emerging from the trees was a girl about his age, accompanied by an Eevee. The girl had black hair down to her mid back and a tan shawl tied securely around her shoulders. Green eyes implored him as she stepped over a patch of tall grass and looked down at the Bulbasaur.

Jason blinked. "Who are you?" Bulbasaur's attention seemed to be drawn to the new stranger as well, and it actually stood up and surveyed her with interest.

"I'm Evalina," the girl said, smiling. "Good to meet you."

"Um, I'm… Jason," he replied, confused. "What were you saying about Bulbasaur not listening to me?"

"It's pretty obvious," smiled Evalina. "I followed the sound of your yelling over here." She extended a hand to touch Bulbasaur's leafy head.

"No!" Jason shouted, yanking her hand away from the pokemon and causing Bulbasaur to chirp at him in anger. "Don't touch it, it's psychotic!"

Only laughter met his ears. "Don't worry, I've gotten worse bites than a Bulbasaur…" Evalina assured him, and before Jason could properly protest any further she had reached out and begun to scratch the pokemon behind its ears. Jason cringed, waiting for a spray of blood—and when none came, he chanced a peek between his fingers to behold a sight that made him want to pop a vein.

The thing was _purring_—that was the only sound that could be used to describe what Bulbasaur was doing—and nudging Evalina's hand to guide her to its favorite scratching spots. Jason could do little more than gawk at its sudden change in disposition. Feeling slightly indignant, he crossed his arms and eyed the girl suspiciously out of the corner of his eye.

"And who exactly are you? Some kind of pokemon-psychic?"

Evalina smiled mysteriously and giggled. "Oh, no, I'm not _that_ good yet." She stood up and offered her hand for a shake. Jason regarded her for a moment before giving in at her good-natured smile and taking her hand in his. "Why don't you come with me to my place for a bit to eat? You two look like you could use a rest."

Although he himself was rather tired, Jason was going to mention that the last thing Bulbasaur needed was a rest after it had been sleeping all day, but one glare from the red eyes at the level of his knee made him reconsider. Groaning inwardly as he realized that he was utterly whipped by his own pokemon, the very creature he was supposed to be controlling and training, he allowed himself to be lead by Evalina and Eevee deeper into the woods.

---------

Jason had always been under the impression that he was physically fit. Not buff, by any stretch of imagination, but _fit_, able to stand strain and exercise.

Evalina proved him brutally wrong. The slight girl was always at least twenty paces ahead of him as Jason struggled through brambles and underbrush and thousands of other obstacles in the forest. Bulbasaur was at Evalina's heels, and every so often would glance back with what Jason was _sure_ was a gloating look of self-satisfaction. Jason wanted to kick it.

"Evalina," Jason said, pausing to catch his breath. "Why do you live up a _mountain?_"

She laughed musically. "This is hardly a mountain! We're almost there."

"'Hardly a mountain?'" Jason repeated to himself under his breath. "Good God, I'd hate to see what this girl's idea of a mountain really _is._"

Jason couldn't quite place exactly why he trusted Evalina so inexplicably the second after he met her. Granted, he trusted _most_ people, but Sabrina's stubborn teachings of cynicism and calculating judgment didn't _completely_ go over his head. He certainly couldn't imagine hiking off into a secluded part of the woods with just _anyone._

Just when he thought he couldn't take another step up the insufferable incline, Evalina called back, "Here we are!"

"_Finally,_" Jason sighed, pulling himself up the last part of the hill and beholding a quaint little house. Surrounded by a _huge_ wood fence twice as tall as he was that enclosed a plot of land quite a few acres wide.

Inside the fence, what appeared to be just under a hundred Pokemon milled about. Some were grazing, some were preening themselves, some were tumbling over and over in playful fights, and some were dozing off in bright patches of sunlight. Bulbasaur looked as if it had come to Pokemon utopia.

Evalina was walking the perimeter of the enclosure, as if looking for something she lost. Or checking for intruders.

Jason's feeble intuition started acting up. Granted, he'd never been great at noticing things, but the way Evalina was acting set him off somehow. "Is something wrong?"

Evalina turned to face him again after she made a complete circle around the house. "Oh, no, nothing's wrong. Just checking to see that everything's in order." She said. Then, turning to open the door, the motioned for him to follow.

Shrugging off her strange behavior, Jason motioned to have Bulbasaur follow him in—only to find that the Pokemon had beat him to the chase. Jason honestly wasn't that surprised.

The interior of Evalina's house was all greens and blues and whites, lending the place a feel of underwater tranquility. Nothing in the house looked too expensive, but all of it was worn-in and well-loved. Jason pulled up a chair without asking, only realizing that he hadn't been asked to sit down when she returned to the room carrying a metal tray of sandwiches. He leapt out of the seat as if he'd been burned. "Err, sorry…"

Evalina blinked at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. "Oh, wonderful! They're working," she said, placing the tray down in front of him before walking gracefully over to the doorway. Hanging above the wood, nailed into the doorframe were two little pouches of various herbs, each with a small symbol etched into it. Jason frowned at them, confused, before Evalina continued. "Please, have a seat, and make yourself at home. These things are charms to make guests feel welcome and comfortable. And, well, since you're the first person I've had here in ages, I haven't had a chance to test out how they work."

Jason blinked, not understanding in the slightest what Evalina was talking about, but not minding now that he had permission to do whatever he wanted. Helping himself to a sandwich—and pushing Bulbasaur off the table with one hand as the savvy Pokemon tried to score a treat for himself—Jason took a look around.

The photographs on the walls were pretty much _all_ of Pokemon of various creeds and colors, lending the room their only splashes of red, orange and yellow.

As Jason was surveying the walls and Evalina was fussing with the "charms", a small girl appeared in the doorway. Jason almost choked on his sandwich. She had appeared out of _thin air._

"Ev—" Jason paused to dislodge a bit of bread from his throat. "_Evalina!_ There's someone in your house!" He leapt to his feet and placed himself between the intruder and Evalina as if to protect her from the child.

Evalina made a sound of mild alarm behind him—which was followed with a sigh and more laughter. Jason was getting accustomed to the sound of her laughing at him. "Oh, Jason, it's nothing to worry about! She lives here! I forgot to mention—" She pushed past him gently and went to stand by the girl in the doorway.

Jason felt somewhat foolish for reacting so sharply to the girl's appearance, but she _had_ materialized out of nowhere, and she _was_ kind of scary looking. With skin paler than milk and large eyes of an icy blue shade, she didn't exactly look friendly. Not to mention her waist-length silvery-blond hair that was in soft curls and her complete lack of expression. She looked like she was about six, but as Evalina continued speaking, Jason was proven wrong for the umpteenth time that day. "This is Carey. She's nine, and she's my cousin."

"Your cousin…?" Jason asked incredulously. The two of them certainly didn't _look_ alike. Evalina's jet-black hair and warm green eyes made her look actually _alive_, unlike the girl. Not to mention that the former had a healthy tan while the latter looked as if she'd never left the indoors in her life. The only thing the two girls seemed to share in common was their slight build and the curls in their hair.

"Carey? Say hello to Jason, he's a friend of mine," Evalina prompted, gently encouraging the girl to step forward into the room. Carey had Jason fixed with an unfaltering stare that chilled him to the bone, but something Evalina said warmed him at the same time.

Friend? They'd barely known each other for an hour and she considered him a friend?

In spite of Jason's outgoing nature, he had remarkably few people consider him a friend, due largely to his overprotective mother and his lack of social life due to Pokemon training. It was the one area in his life he was dead serious about, almost to the point of obsession, according to Sabrina. Needless to say, Jason didn't give himself a lot of time to socialize with other kids when he was young, and Sabrina hadn't given him a lot of freedom to do so, either.

Carey chose that moment to speak up. "… Hello."

Her voice sounded even _younger_ than she looked. Jason could have sworn the girl was _three_ from the high, baby-soft sound.

Jason realized they were watching him. Forcing his expression neutral and easy-going, he replied with, "Hey there."

Carey seemed to accept that and turned to leave the room. Evalina looked as if she were going to insist that the girl stay, but thought better of it and let her go. Once the girl was gone—in a way much more _normal_ than her entrance—Evalina turned to Jason again.

"It was very sweet of you to be worried about me! I hope you'll pardon Carey, though—she's very shy around new people."

Jason wasn't sure what to say to that. "No problem," he remarked, waving a hand in the air and doing his best to look manly and in control. He hoped the comment sufficiently answered both questions.

Evalina giggled softly and headed for the door. "If you're done with your food, I can show you around the place," she said. "Bring Bulbasaur, too."


	7. Chapter 7 Azrael

Chapter 7

By the time Azrael had made her way back to the house, the gaslights were burning brightly. This was her mother's equivalent to leaving the porch-light on for her daughter to find her way home, in spite of the fact that both of them knew for a fact that Azrael was more than capable of tracing the route to her house—and anywhere else in the forest, for that matter—blindfolded and bound.

Still, it was a nice thought. Azrael turned the wrought-iron key to the gas flow down until it flickered out and died before letting herself in through the old, creaking screen door. Sure enough, there was her mother, looking up at her in a startled way that let Azrael know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had been crying only moments before and didn't want her daughter to notice.

Azrael pretended not to. "Morning, Mom," she said, slipping out of her ankle-high black boots and propping them up against the wall. "Have a good sleep?"

Her mother gave her a watery smile and nodded. "Where did you go this morning, Azzy?" she asked, getting up and busying herself with straightening the already straight pile of papers in front of her.

"Oh, just went out for some early-morning Pokemon catching," Azrael said, ignoring her mother's use of her much-hated nickname. If she were a few years younger, Azrael probably would have complained loudly at the use of the affectionate term—but lately, she couldn't bring herself to do _anything_ at all against her mother's wishes.

Instead, Azrael moved into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of tea. From the living room, her mother's voice called, "Oh? Did you get anything new?"

"Actually, yeah," Azrael called back, making sure to raise her voice much higher than it needed to be. Although her mother was still quite young—barely in her forties—she was practically deaf. It was only one of the many things that showed the affects of depression on the woman. Gritting her teeth, Azrael fought down a wave of hot, resentful emotion towards her father. _Hate gets you nowhere,_ she thought to herself. _Too much of_ any _emotion is bad for you._

Feeling somewhat calmer after repeating one of her mantras to herself, Azrael continued. "It's a Murkrow, probably level five from the fight it put up," she said, replacing the rusted teapot back on the burner and turning the flame down to a simmer.

"Oh, excellent!" her mother said as Azrael returned to the room. "Your—you must be so proud," she said, catching herself and smiling widely to cover the slip-up. "Just the type of Pokemon you excel at, too."

Azrael knew that the words that had almost escaped her mother were, "Your father would be so proud"; she _also_ knew that it wasn't true. Brushing it off, she said, "Yeah, it's quite fortunate."

They shared the companionable-yet-tense silence that Azrael was all too familiar with as they sipped their respective beverages. Unbidden, a twitch started up under Azrael's right eye and didn't go away until she closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply. The twitch had been present since four days ago, when Azrael had had one of her most intensive introspective moments while looking through her father's old things. She'd come across the certificate awarded to Koga by the Elite Four, granting the man permission and full rights over Fuchsia City gym.

As Azrael blew the dust from the framed piece of parchment, she couldn't help but feel a pang of panic, and that's when the twitch had made its first appearance. She knew that she was getting no closer to her aspiration of becoming a gym leader by staying at home, in one place, training a grand total of two Pokemon. She could hear her mother's stricken voice in her head, though, making up any excuse to keep her daughter with her: "Azzy, you don't _need_ to go out so soon, you're only thirteen," or "Azzy, don't feel like you're wasting your life away! You don't _need_ to be a gym leader," or "Azzy, am I too much trouble for you?"

So, Azrael had spent the last four days desperately trying to think of a way she could break the news to her mother that, yes, she _needed_ to get away from the house for a while to train in the real world. A way that wouldn't make it seem like an escape from her home.

So far, she'd come up blank. There just wasn't any easy way to talk to the woman these days, especially about a topic so delicate as change. For her entire life—after the year where her half-brother was taken from her, that is—Azrael had made it her personal mission to see to it that no upsetting change happened around her mother's spun-glass world any more. Unfortunately, that somehow became _all_ change. The two of them shared a ritualistic routine that bordered on obsession, and if something were to fall out of place—no matter how small—Azrael's mother was thrown into a deep depression that usually lasted for days.

But it couldn't be put off any longer. Azrael cleared her throat.

"Mom?" She had the woman's attention immediately. "Well… I was thinking about taking a trip," she said, trying to make it sound as menial and unthreatening as possible.

"Trip?" Her mother's wide grey eyes became even wider. "What kind of trip? Where to?"

Azrael cut in to answer her first two questions before an avalanche of others could follow. "Just a trip around different areas of Kanto. A training excursion," she said, and continued hastily as she saw her mother open her mouth to interject. "Not a full-on 'Pokemon master' thing—that's the last thing I want to do."

Her mother was kneading her lower lip with her teeth. "I don't know, Azzy… it's a big world out there, and you're _only_ thirteen… really, deary, you don't need to rush so much. You're doing fine here with Eevee!"

Azrael closed her eyes and made a silent plea for patience. "Mom, it's true that I'm doing _okay_ here with Eevee, but that's all I'll ever be if I stay here. 'Okay,'" she opened her eyes and tried to make contact with her mother's, but all she caught was a silvery-gray haired head turned to the side. She was being shut out. This was bad.

"Mom, please look at me." Reluctantly her mother turned to face her again, although her eyes remained miserably trained on the coffee table. One nail was worrying a chip off of the edge. "I'll be okay. I promise you that I'll be back in two months, at the very, very most."

"Two _months?_ Azzy… I _really_ don't like the sound of this," she said, looking up and fixing her with a pleading stare. "You're all I have… I'm just not ready to give you up."

"Give me up? Mom, you're hardly going to be giving me up," Azrael said, moving to sit beside the woman and pulling her into an awkward, one-armed hug. Azrael wasn't great with physical contact, but she felt that this time some of it was called for. "I'm old enough to go on a two-month trip. Other kids manage to survive across Kanto for over a _year_ when they turn _ten._ I'm thirteen now… and I'll be fourteen soon enough. I can handle myself, and I'll send Murkrow to you with a letter every week."

She seemed a little more at ease with this promise, and actually appeared to be contemplating the proposition.

Azrael plunged on. "I have to follow my dream, Mom. Remember, you told me that you always wanted me to be everything I could be."

It was true, Azrael though. Her mother _had_ said that to her—before her father disappeared with her older brother. Before her half-brother had gone to live with his father and never come back for a single visit. Before her mother had suffered her biggest nervous breakdown and refused to leave the house for anything besides hanging up the laundry. Azrael was putting all her money on the wild hope that somewhere within this sad, scared shell was the brilliant, vibrant young woman that Azrael had strived to be like.

Her mother was speaking again, and Azrael forcibly pulled herself out of her reverie. "Azzy, you have to promise me you'll write me at _least_ twice a week. And I don't want you leaving until you can prove to me that that Murkrow knows its way here."

Azrael could scarcely believe her ears. "Are you saying that I can go?" she asked, hardly daring to hope.

Her mother smiled at her with a hint of her old exasperation mixed with playfulness. "Well, what _else_ would I mean, silly goose?" She looked old and tired, worried, sad; basically everything that she _always_ was. However, she also seemed resigned, accepting this new turn of events and—Azrael could hardly wrap her mind around it—_adapting_ to it.

She was prouder of her mother than she'd ever been in her life.

"I am more than happy to meet your terms, Madame," Azrael answered playfully, standing up and hooking an arm in front of her stomach to swoop low in a bow. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I have a Murkrow to train."

---------

Training Murkrow turned out to be a trifle more difficult than Azrael had anticipated.

The Pokemon wasn't really _difficult_, so to speak, but it _did_ so its best to be completely learning impaired whenever Azrael tried to teach it anything. Whereas Eevee had been willing to learn right off the bat due to their childhood bond, and Sneazel intelligent to a fault as it stubbornly defied her every step of the way, Murkrow honestly seemed to be just plain stupid.

Azrael mentally berated herself for thinking like that. Certainly the Pokemon couldn't be blamed for being young and inexperienced. Still, she thought to herself with a sigh as it refused to understand a command as simple as "get me that stick," this was going to be difficult.

If she could _only_ manage to get it to understand the "fetch" command, she would be well on her way to proving to her mother that it could handle letter-carrying. Azrael was sure that she could make it come back to its home no matter how far away it was; the trick was convincing her mother that it could do this.

It had been a week since the two of them had come to an agreement; Murkrow would fly to Cerulean City and bring back a pamphlet from the Cerulean City gym door. Azrael had readily agreed, but now she was having second thoughts. Murkrow didn't seem able to recognize a stick ten feet away from her as a target; how was it supposed to know exactly what to get from Cerulean?

"Eevee, I sure wish _you_ could tell this guy what to do," she said begrudgingly, staring down at her brown companion. Eevee looked up at her in commiseration, before seeming to come to an idea. Trotting over to the hopelessly confused black bird, Eevee nudged the stick with its nose and looked at Murkrow hopefully. Azrael had never seen a Pokemon do a better impression of a blank stare. Eevee sat back on its haunches thoughtfully before looking over at Azrael and nudging the stick with its paw.

"Well, Eevee, okay. Bring me the stick," she said, curling her fingers outward and pulling them in toward her chest in the "fetch" sign. Eevee eagerly clipped up the stick and bounded for her, depositing it at her feet.

Meanwhile, Murkrow was watching with interest. Azrael picked up the delivered object and thrust it out again, watching as it flew about twenty feet from her. "Bring me the stick," she said again, using the hand-signal. She thought she knew what Eevee was up to, and was more than willing to partake.

Murkrow was cawing now, and seemed ready to try. Eevee dropped the stick at Azrael's side and sat back to watch.

Picking the thing up again, Azrael made sure she had Murkrow's full attention before she gave her command. "Bring me the stick!" she said, chucking it in the air with one hand and using her signal with the other.

Murkrow took off in a flurry of feathers and dirt, and—Azrael could scarcely contain the sudden surge of triumph that welled suddenly in her—_caught_ it in his beak in midair!

"_Very good!_" Azrael said as Murkrow performed loop-de-loops in the air. "Now, bring it here!" She made the sign again, and the Pokemon flew to her feet and dropped the stick on her left boot. It fluffed its feathers in unmistakable pride and seemed to eye Eevee as if saying, "See? I'm _just_ as good as you."

Azrael dropped a bit of meat for Murkrow and stroked its head in congratulations. As the bird chowed down, Azrael sighed. Well, that was step one. Now she had to figure out how to get it to bring her something it had never seen before.

---------

Two weeks later, Azrael had managed to get her hands on a map of Kanto and a photograph of the front of Cerulean gym. A short walk to Pallet town had been in order to manage these two things, and her mother had been gripped with irrational distrust and paranoia that her daughter was going to skip off into her two-month journey ahead of schedule. Azrael had to explain to her in layman's terms that it would be near impossible for Azrael to get far with no clothing packed, no food, no _money_, and only Eevee at her side. She also had to play a guilt trip on her mother—something she really despised doing—and gave her the "don't you trust me?" trip.

And so, it was a triumphant, but exasperated Azrael that trekked her way back to her house that day.

"Murkrow," she said, and the bird flew from the top branch of a tree to sit on her shoulder. Azrael was pleased at how readily she'd gained the Pokemon's trust. It took half of the struggle of training away. Now all she needed to do was get the thing to comprehend her commands.

Azrael cozied up on the dirt beside her team (she'd decided to let Sneazel out for a breather) and spread the map down on the slightly damp ground. Smoothing out the creases, she pointed at their forest. "Murkrow, this is where we are right now," she said, placing a small drawing of the Pokemon in the forest. Azrael wasn't the best artist around, but she could capture the likeness of things well enough. Murkrow seemed to recognize itself, and a knot of tension loosened in her stomach. If Murkrow could connect pictures with reality, it _obviously_ wasn't as dumb as she'd previously thought.

"Okay, and this is a picture of what I want you to _bring to me_," she said, laying the photo of Cerulean's gym down on the map of the city and accompanying it with the hand gesture for "fetch." Murkrow tried to retrieve the photograph for her, but Azrael stopped it with a hand. "No, not _this_," she said, waving the photo in the air. She placed it back down and pointed to the clear box of pamphlets fixed to the door. "That."

Murkrow eyes the place Azrael's finger was and nipped at it. Azrael sighed heavily and massaged the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. "It's that way," she said half-heartedly, pointing north.

She hadn't really expected the Pokemon to know what she meant, but she was surprised as a flurry of dirt and leaves were kicked up in her face as the Pokemon took wing. Getting up and watching the black figure grow smaller and smaller in the distance, she frowned. What could it be up to?

Even though things had been taking a surprising turn for the better lately, Azrael knew better than to get her hopes up. Life was never fair, and very _rarely_ did things work out the way she wanted them to—unbidden, she thought of what her mother would say if she actually shared her philosophy with her. "How _pessimistic,_ Azzy," but no; she wasn't pessimistic. If anything, Azrael was a die-hard realist.

Returning inside and giving her mother a shrug, she padded down the hall to her room to catch some sleep. She was halfway there when she thought she saw movement in one of the rooms.

Azrael knew better than to ignore details. Freezing in place and tapping her thigh softly with two fingers—Eevee sidled up beside her at the command—Azrael opened her eyes wide and strained her ears for any sounds of an intruder. When none came, she peered into the room she'd thought she'd seen something in. nothing was there.

Stepping into the dimly lit room and groping for the light, she keyed it up to a dim glow. The gaslight in the kitchen must have dimmed, because her mother's voice called through the house, "Is anything wrong?"

"No," Azrael answered. "Just checking out the storage room."

Azrael spotted the open window a second before she heard the sound of something very large taking flight outside. Without thinking of the possible danger she dashed for the window and leaned out, straining to see what it was. When she couldn't get the right angle she hoisted herself out—landing hard on her bad ankle as she did—and tore around the side of the house.

By the time she got there the thunderous flapping had subsided, and her mother was outside as well. They both watched as a majestic creature got smaller and smaller in the distance, although neither of them could make out what it was. Frustrated, Azrael accompanied her mother back inside to help with dinner as the woman babbled on about how "you rarely see Pidgeots around here!"

Azrael wondered if her mother honestly thought a full-grown Pidgeot—or whatever it was—would come right outside their house out of its own volition, or if she, too, thought that it belonged to a trainer and was merely gabbing on about a different theory for her daughter's sake. Or her own. It occupied her thoughts all throughout dinner, taking away whatever conversational skills she had.

No, Azrael thought, as she was washing dishes later on that evening when her mother had gone to bed. No, Pokemon don't _usually_ come right up to people. They make themselves quite scarce, normally—especially the fully evolved ones. That Pidgeot-thing had definitely _belonged_ to someone… the question was, who?

Azrael passed by the storage room again and realized that she'd left the light burning softly inside. Feeling foolish at such a waste of energy, she ducked her head inside to turn it off—and _that's_ when she caught sight of it.

A flash of silver dug into the side of the window. Squinting her eyes, she drew closer to it, an inexplicable feeling of apprehension rising in her like a storm cloud. She swallowed it, but it returned, this time, with a lightning strike of dread as she realized what the thing was.

Embedded in the soft wood of their windowsill was one of her father's shuriken.


	8. Chapter 8 Visora

Chapter 8

A couple of hours later, Visora removed her shoes wearily and threw them with conviction in a random direction. The shoe hit something and bounced away as her exhausted feet cried in release.

Flopping back onto the straw-strewn ground, she rolled her eyes up into their sockets and groaned. A few seconds later, Elva came bouncing over to her, with considerably less gusto than normal. "Hey, Vi…" she said, dropping down next to her sister and stretching out like a sunbathing cat. "Nice place, isn't it?"

Visora thought that, yes, this _was_ indeed a rather nice area, for being roughly a hole with a cloth at the entrance. However, hell if she was going to compliment the place that they had spent two and a half hours reaching on foot through brambles and weeds that grew increasingly thick the further they got into the woods. It was a quaint little place, with straw mats strewn haphazardly all across the floor, papers stacked neatly in a pile to the left, and a small bundle of clothing wrapped in a blue cloth to the left. It was well hidden, too—something Visora had realized when she was yanked roughly away from the edge of the abyss by Gav, after failing to see the unsettled dip of netting and leaves that was the roof of their structure underfoot.

All in all, the day wasn't exactly going the way she'd planned.

Their two guides returned through the cloth flap, dropping down into the flat. "Hey, all," Ciara said amiably, tossing her black slippers much the way Visora had.

Gav kept his boots on, and secured the netting in place again. Elva grinned at both of them. "Heya!" she said.

Awkward silence reigned for what felt like an eternity. Ciara brushed her brownish-red hair off her shoulder. Gaveriel coughed. Elva shuffled her feet and fidgeted. Visora glared at all of them.

"So, thank you for freeing us from your traps and taking us to your… place," Visora said, deliberately pausing on the word and gauging their reactions. Just as she expected, Ciara lifted her head as if looking for challenge in her eyes, and Gaveriel regarded her evenly. "But maybe it would be good if we could find out exactly where Lavender Town is in relation to where we are. That's where we're headed."

Gav was on his feet. "Lavender's a long way from here," he said, walking over to where Visora sat and pulling up a spot of turf beside her. For a moment, she didn't know what he was doing—and then he began to draw a diagram in the dirt with a stick. He made a crude "x" for where they were, then drew what appeared to be a rocky path up a mountain, on the other side of which he sketched out an "L"—for Lavender Town, she could only assume. "If I were you, I'd go back the way you came and take the more routine path."

Defiance flared up in Visora's throat. "And why exactly should we do that?" she said, very carefully regulating her tone to be firm but not sassy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ciara fidgeting, waiting with bated breath for Visora to say something just a _little_ bit confrontational—probably waiting for an opportunity to get into the fight. The auburn-eyed girl looked like the type to do just that.

"Well," Gav started, and Visora knew he was going to fall into her conversational trap. "I don't want you two to try to rough it down that path—it's—" _dangerous_ was the word on his tongue, and yet he paused, as if sensing the ground he was treading. "It's a long way, and you'd probably do better to save yourselves some time."

Visora was impressed. She was the _master_ of passive-aggressive verbal attacks, the Goddess of mind games and manipulation. And yet Gav had just avoided making himself sound like a pig-headed chauvinist who believed girls couldn't do anything, instead making it seem as if he were merely looking out for the best interest of their schedule.

Elva gave Visora a sly glance, grinning behind her hands. If anything, Visora knew her sister understood the way she worked—and wasn't used to seeing her get "gonged" as she so childishly put it.

Visora crossed her arms and said, "Well, _actually_, we're out here for some Pokemon experience…" she drawled, letting the sentence fall off casually before continuing. "You don't suppose you could show us where the really _strong_ ones are?"

Gav smiled amiably. "Sorry to tell you, but TR's scared off most of the ones that used to live around this area—" he motioned with one well-muscled arm around the flat, even though Visora knew he meant the forest outside it. "All around Saffron's become somewhat of a dead-zone for wild Pokemon recently."

Visora couldn't help a mild snort. "You aren't trying to tell me the Silph Co. fiasco is back in action…?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but Ciara chose that moment to speak up. "Actually, yeah. You see, Gav and I make it our business to know the _inner workings_ of TR, and we're almost certain that they—"

"Hey, hey, whoa," Gav cut in, lifting his darkly-tanned hands at his sister. "I thought you were just ragging on _me_ for saying too much?"

Ciara gave him a blank stare. "I thought we established that these two _weren't_ with the Rockets."

The boy smiled. "What if they catch them and tie them up and torture them for information? You have to be _paranoid_, sis."

"_Gaveriel_, you can be _so_ impossible."

Visora's reddish-brown eyebrows shot into her hairline. _Gaveriel?_ Well, _that_ was certainly unexpected. Gaveriel sounded like the kind of name you'd give a pet poodle, or a little girl with blond hair—not a name for someone as earthy and calm as this guy.

Gav—or Gaveriel—looked mildly embarrassed. He appeared to shake it off, though, and turned to Elva and Visora again. "So, do you want us to show you the way out of the forest?"

Visora stood up and crossed her arms, back into full-swing conversational shark attack. "I don't think so. We can handle ourselves, thank you."

Gaveriel looked uncertain. "Well, I don't want you guys trying to figure out how to get through here on your own. It's a real hard path—even I get lost sometimes, and Ci and I have been here for a few months now."

Visora was mildly impressed. Truly roughing it in the woods, she thought. How ruggedly charming. She had to admit, for two nut balls, these two were mildly interesting. Deciding to start up a conversation as they began to walk outside on an unspoken command, she said, "So, what exactly _do_ you guys have against Team Rocket? I promise I won't spill the beans if they catch me," she added, catching Ciara's sidelong glare at Gaveriel.

Gaveriel looked back at her over his shoulder, a mischievous grin on his face. "Even if they make you watch Richard Simmons?"

Visora shuddered. "Even if they do something that diabolical, the secret's safe."

Elva had been remarkably quiet this whole time, but appeared no longer able to keep quiet. "What do you guys do? It sounds like some kind of ultra-top secret spy stuff."

Ciara laughed full-heartedly, and Gaveriel chuckled low in his throat. "Well, we just don't like the way the Rockets are allowed complete reign over basically anything," he began, holding the flap of the flat open so that Visora and Elva could climb out. "They've given us trouble in the past. And the stuff we do is actually mostly infiltration and spying—espionage stuff, like you said." Elva looked pleased and terribly interested.

Ciara was speaking up now, and Gaveriel seemed finished with his part of the explaining. "First, we keep our ears peeled for any strange happenings in the news," she said, kicking a large and imposing-looking rock out of the way. "Then, we figure out if the Rockets are involved—"

"And how often is that?" Visora couldn't help interjecting sarcastically.

Ciara shot her a look. "Actually, _quite_ often."

Elva grabbed hold of Visora's arm below the elbow, as if to say, _don't piss these people off! I want to hear the rest of the story_.

Grudgingly, Visora resolved to keep her comments to herself.

"Anyway," Ciara was continuing, already warped up in her retellings. "Then we plot the place where they seem to be meeting most often—it's remarkably easy, actually, they're _awfully_ obvious about it most of the time, it's a _miracle_ nobody else seems to notice—or maybe they're just afraid of bringing them to the police, beats me, I mean, it's their civic _duty_ after all, but then again, the police are kinda _useless_ lately, so I can understand—"

"Tangent," Gaveriel commented kindly.

"Oh, sorry," Ciara said, clearing her throat. "Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah," she paused to duck under what would have been a lethal branch that Gaveriel was holding back for them. "Well, after we find their meeting place, we infiltrate. Now, _that's_ the hard part, cause even though the Rockets are _notoriously_ stupid—well, most of them, anyway—they're really, _really_ hopped up on security if it's a big enough heist. So, we usually have to break in and hide out and snap our pictures in poor lighting. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get to rent a video camera and get some crappy footage of them talking to each other about the cash they earned and the rare Pokemon they plan on stealing. If we can't do either one, we get voice recordings, but _those_ kinda suck too, because the police would probably think we just made it as a joke, or something."

"Aww, that bites! Just cause you're kids no one would listen to you?" Elva asked, genuinely remorseful about the run of bad-luck their strange captors-turned-tour-guides would encounter.

"Yeah, pretty much." Ciara seemed to be winded from explaining all of that, and fell silent.

Visora decided it was safe to speak up. "So, let me get this straight—" Gaveriel began climbing straight _up_ a rock wall then, and she paused. "Wait, what are you doing?"

"Climbing up the hill," he said, turning back and hanging off the ledge with one hand to look down at her. "It's the only way through here."

Visora was incredulous. "You've got to be kidding me… oh, okay, fine. Bump over," she said, pushing her jangling hoop bracelets up onto her upper arms so they wouldn't be in the way of her hands.

Gaveriel looked uncertain again. "You sure you're gonna be okay doing this?"

There it was. "Just because I'm a girl you think I can't do this?"

"Oh, come off it," Ciara grumbled from below. "Gaveriel's no sexist—I'd kick his sorry _ass_ if he was. He just doesn't want you to fall off and break your pretty little head open." The way Ciara said it seemed friendly, but there was an undertone of warning: _Don't talk to my brother like that._

Visora admired her slightly for refusing to take her verbal bashings, and decided to cut back. Not responding, she proceeded to scramble up the wall, using Gaveriel's footholds and stepping where he stepped precisely. She could hear Elva following suit below her, and finally Ciara. They climbed that way in silence, but even though Visora was becoming increasingly aware of the height, she refused to forget her question. She held fast to it in her head, determined to ask it once they were on level ground again.

Eventually they had climbed up and over the rock wall and come to a rather nice-looking patch of grass. Relieved, Visora made a move to sit down—

Only to be caught halfway down by Gaveriel's arms and pulled back to her feet. Appalled and confused, she pulled away from him—and saw the nest of Weedles peering obtrusively out from a patch of underbrush. Embarrassed, she muttered a hushed, "Thanks," before launching haphazardly into her question from earlier to cover up her fumble. "So, you guys infiltrate dangerous criminal's hideouts instead of reporting their activities directly to the police?"

Gaveriel looked as if he didn't know where this was going. "Yeah," he said. "But you make it sound as if we have a choice on the matter. TR is quite savvy with their information—they'd know the second we reported them, and would clear out of there faster than you can say 'rare candy,'" he ran a hand through his tousled jet-black hair. "They'd call us lying little brats and send us away, and then our record would be marked and they'd never believe us again."

Visora was astounded. "That's pretty presumptuous, don't you think?"

Gaveriel only smiled. "You can never assume too much with Team Rocket."

Visora wasn't sure why, but she lost the will to continue picking apart their logic from that smile alone. She couldn't place it—and she almost thought it might have been her imagination, but she could have _sworn_ she saw a flash of bone-deep, world-shaking sorrow in his chocolaty-brown eyes… if even for a second. However, it was gone the moment she blinked, leaving her feeling suddenly foolish.

"Well, I'm not tired," Elva piped up from behind her. "Should we continue? Is it very far from here? I'll bet we're almost there, aren't we?"

"It's about another two hour's walk," Ciara said. "Not so bad."

Visora only groaned.


	9. Chapter 9 Blake

Chapter 9

It was a downright spooky town, Blake decided, folding up his map and stuffing it into the pocket of his too-large navy blue jacket. _Really_ spooky.

Of course, he knew that was the whole intention of Lavender Town, but it still didn't shake the feeling that his mortal _soul_ was going to be sucked out of his body just by looking at a tombstone wrong. All over the place psychics with flowing white hair had set up little booths or mats selling macabre souvenirs for the tourists—not that there _were_ any. Some of these included headless Pokemon dolls, a photograph of the legendary Pokemon Tower with silvery words penned below—"It's To _Die_ For!"—and what looked terribly like dried _blood_ in glass phials.

Yep, he thought. This place is just _weird._

Pulling his backpack on a little tighter, Blake began the long trek over to the Pokemon Center. Most places had their Centers very near to the wild pathways where trainers would be coming from long, hard hikes. Not Lavender Town. Their Center was shoved _way_ in the back, a bit in front of the haunting tower that jutted up from the north like a death spike. It also looked pretty run-down and desolate.

Blake walked by an old, abandoned well and happened to glance in. he caught his reflection in a brown wooden bucket and paused. Jesus, he thought, when did I get so _pale?_ His normally fair skin was parchment-white—probably from staying _indoors_ so freaking much, he berated—and his strange, silver-shot black hair was disheveled and dark, which only served to set off his countenance even more. It didn't help that his eyes were two black pools of lightless, colorless depth. Dismally, Blake wondered if he fit right in at Lavender Town.

Unfortunately, he didn't get a chance to pursue that thought much further, for a bony white hand fell upon his shoulder, and before he could even exclaim in shock he was whirled around to face rolling eyes and sheet-white flowing hair. The woman appeared to be in her eighties or so—and also appeared to be having an epileptic fit.

Blake froze. For a faltering second he was afraid his voice would fail him. And then it unstuck, and he was shouting for help, waving his free arm to catch someone's attention.

"This woman's in trouble!" he shouted, gasping as she leaned her weight upon him suddenly, clutching fearfully to his shirtfront. She hardly weighed anything at all, but had taken him by surprise, and his knees buckled. He tipped back against the well and felt his tailbone collide with the stone. Stars exploded in his vision, and he wondered somewhere in the back of his head how large the bruise would be.

That little back-burner in his mind was indeed a strange phenomenon—he could be in the most dire, upsetting, terrifying situation, and while 98 of his conscious mind would be focused on daunting at the task at hand or the danger before him, pulsing beta waves and preparing for fight or flight, the _other_ 2 or so percent would be calmly wondering what he'd have for breakfast the next day if he lived through the ordeal.

Right now, Back Burner Blake was wondering vaguely if _all_ the psychics wore their hair ash-white and hip-length, if they actually held "creepy psychic" meetings and discussed what kind of morbid fortunes to tell people. He wondered if they ever changed their accepted hair policy, maybe rotated it monthly and decided to stylize themselves in hot pink Mohawks, just to shake things up a bit.

Irritated at his irrational train of thought, Blake pushed the woman up to stand on her feet, partly because he wanted her to get a grip on herself, and partly because he was worried about tipping backwards into the well. The woman still seemed to be seizing, and then, all at once, she stood straight and tall. Blake cringed, peering at her out of the corner of his eye.

The woman's wrinkled finger lifted to point at him. What she said next he would always remember, and often look back on with a shudder. It sent a jolt of shock and utter _dread_ through him, in spite of how much he tried to convince himself that he didn't believe in psychics.

"_Death,_" she shrieked. "The mark of _Death_ is all over you, child! I see _Death_ in your eyes; I see _Death_ beneath your skin! You will see _Death_ wherever you go, in your family, in your friends—in everything you love! Beware, child!"

And suddenly, "Gastly!"

The woman threw a pokeball at the ground. The button triggered, and red lasers outlined an incandescent, shapeless blob. A moment later Blake's eyes had adjusted, and there was a Ghost type Pokemon, a hazy black orb the color of Blake's eyes with a wide, blood-red mouth with white fangs and an even hazier aura of white fog misting around and through it.

Shocked, Blake reached for the pokeball at his waist. "Doduo!" he called, jabbing the button once with his thumb to enlarge the device, and again to release the Pokemon within.

Doduo cocked its heads up and regarded Blake questioningly as he was backing up from the woman and her Pokemon, circling around the well to stand as far from her as he could. He knew that he was now in a Pokemon battle—but he wasn't sure what kind of battle this would be. The woman didn't seem all that _sane_… and he wasn't sure if she really _wanted_ to fight him, or if she was merely bringing out her Pokemon randomly to show off or just because she felt like it.

Back Burner Blake mildly wondered if she would dance the Cha Cha if she felt like it.

The woman seemed to go lax all at once, and, against his better judgment, Blake shot forward and caught her before her head cracked against the stone ledge. Stumbling under her weight and falling, he took the brunt of the slip and grunted as his palm split open on a rock. He also seemed to have been biting his lip, because the sudden impact caused his tooth to split through it. A blossom of blood curled into his mouth, and as he swallowed it down reflexively he wondered if it would become a canker sore.

The woman blinked mildly and looked around, seeming bewildered. She caught sight of Blake then, and exclaimed.

"Oh, dearie, I'm so sorry! Did I startle you?" she pulled herself up and helped him up as well—or, grabbed his arm while he pulled himself up. Blake didn't think she looked strong enough to lift his backpack, let alone him. He frowned and regarded her warily.

"Are you okay now?" he asked, unsure what else to say.

"Oh, yes, dearie. It only happens sometimes, when I come across someone with a very strong destiny." Blake opened his mouth to tell her exactly _what_ she'd said to him—and maybe ask for an explanation—but she cut him off with a sharp sound and a hand in the air. "No, no! Dearie, you must never tell me what I say when I am under the influence of a spirit! It is for the better, dearie… it keeps my mind's eye unclouded. Now, I must be on my way… I am terribly sorry if I startled you or caused you distress…"

Blake blinked, and she was already twenty or so paces away. Wow, he marveled. For an old coot, she can book it.

Yet he was still mildly—no, _incredibly_ disturbed. Shaking the dirt out of his jeans and returning Doduo to its pokeball, he meandered the rest of the way to the Pokemon Center to heal his team and get himself some gauze for his split lip.


	10. Chapter 10 Gaveriel

Chapter 10

Gaveriel was doing his best to be patient. That was saying a lot, as he was normally a very, _very_ patient person, patient enough to endure his sister's constant tangents and the painstakingly slow process of undoing Team Rocket's embroidery stitch by painful stitch. Yes, patience came as second-nature to him, the way others would regard painting, writing, or any other skill they had honed to near-perfection over the years. Muscle memory.

The girl, Elva, however, had been rattling their ears off with questions about their lives and missions, and the other one, Visora, had been nothing but rude the entire trip. It had been an hour since they'd managed to drag themselves over the rock ledge, and now Gaveriel was counting down the seconds until they could drop the two off at Lavender Town.

"How many photos do you guys have? What about videos? Are they in black and white? The videos, I mean, but yeah, the photos too. And how good are your sound clips? I like working with videos… what kind of camera do you use? When are you going to turn them in? Where are you headed after this? What are they up to? How do you know? Do they really all wear the same thing? What kind of Pokemon do they steal? Do the police know that Team Rocket isn't really disbanded? Why does everyone think they're still broken up if they're operating? When was their first new operation? Were you there? Did you get pictures?"

He didn't _dislike_ them—Elva seemed genuinely nice, if a bit vacuous, and Visora was bitingly intelligent, even if she was cynical as hell—but he was not used to this much exposure to females. Ciara was usually more than enough. His sister _was_ always harassing him to get a girlfriend, in spite of the fact that they were only eleven and thirteen respectively, and warning him that he would die an old maid. It was a running gag between the two of them; he'd call her a crotchety old geezer—she'd call him a whiny old nag. He'd call her a rambunctious little boy—she'd call him a worrisome mother hen. Their humor was rather skewed, but they understood each other, and that was all that counted.

Ciara had nudged him in the ribs after they'd brought Visora and Elva to their flat and left to scope the area out for followers, saying something along the lines of, "The red-head is cute! Ask her for her number!" to which Gaveriel had replied, "I don't even _know_ her, Ci." A little while back, she had nudged him in the ribs again and hissed under her breath, "Never mind, bro… the girl's _insufferable,"_ to which Gaveriel had laughed.

Actually, Gaveriel had enjoyed maneuvering his way around her clever little conversation traps. He'd done a lot of sweet-talking as a kid and even more negotiating as a teenager, and was quite up to par on the tricks of the trade, what and what not to say. It was rather nice to meet someone that had the ability to run him around in circles chasing after a peaceable ending that didn't exist—and it was even more of a triumph to avoid the ending they wanted you to fall into. He wondered if Visora had ever had someone figure out her strategy before.

Now that he thought of it, she'd been rather quiet for the last hour. He wasn't complaining—although, now Elva wouldn't quit bombarding them with questions.

"We've got assloads of photos _and_ videos… and yeah, they're black-and-whites, we're tight on cash… the sound clips are pretty nasty too, and… no, I don't know what brand we have. Gav, do you know? No? Okay, well… we're gonna turn them all in when we get real good, hard evidence. It'll knock 'em flat off their feet so they _can't_ deny it. We're going to Celadon next, right bro? We're not sure yet, but we'll find out soon enough. Well, they wear different stuff when they go _in_ to the meetings, but they all change into the black suits after. Real dorky looking. The Rockets want any kind of rare Pokemon that'll get them money and—yeah, just money is pretty much it. The police are dumb and people will continue to deny it until it's shoved in their faces. 'cause they like being ignorant. It's easier than owning up to something unpleasant. We heard about their operation. Yeah, we were actually there. No, didn't get shots—we were way young. I don't even remember it, but I'm sure Gav does—right, bro?"

Gaveriel was thrown out of his daze again by his sister's address. "Yeah?"

"I said, do you remember the first new Rocket operation we saw?"

Gaveriel missed a step and covered his stumble with a jump over an obtrusive rock. Once he'd regained his footing he regarded his sister with wary, questioning eyes. She seemed desperate to get Elva off her back, though, and beseechingly made hilarious expressions of agony. Visora, who was behind him, seemed to see her contortions as well, because she snorted.

"Well, I was really young, but I remember some stuff," he said. "Ci and I were there with our—with our parents," he said casually, pulling ahead of the pack a bit and forcing them to keep pace with him. "They were sitting in on the meeting, because naturally they didn't _know_ it was Rocket affiliated until halfway through the thing. We were there because they couldn't get a sitter in time or something." He could feel eyes on the back of his head and wondered if he wasn't doing a good enough job at keeping the tension out of his voice. "Well, anyway, so the 'rents are listening to this proposition by the then-Boss of the Rockets, and when they start to realize what exactly they're being asked to join, they stand up and walk out. End of story," he said, pulling back to regard two pathways for a moment. Ciara muttered, "left one," and Gaveriel started down it. That was always the part he couldn't remember. "All I really recall is a few guys in black suits and sitting at a long wood table and voices talking about stuff. I was drawing on Dad's notebook, since it was boring stuff."

"What I would give to remember what they were saying!" Ciara lamented, folding her arms behind her head sunbather-style and gazing up at the late afternoon sky. "Imagine the _goldmine_ of dirt we'd have on those weasels then!"

There was an intake of air beside him, and Gaveriel braced himself for a verbal assault from Visora. When nothing came, he turned to regard her questioningly. She was looking rather disturbed, face twisted into something like annoyed repression and indecision. She caught him looking at her, and for a moment his dark brown eyes locked with her leaf-green ones. A second later they looked away and continued walking, not acknowledging each other anymore.

And then Elva began her talking again. The questions went on and on as the troupe traveled, and Gaveriel noticed that Ciara was getting less and less descriptive in her answers as the minutes wore on.

---------

They'd stopped to rest at a stream for a while, and the two girls seemed overwhelmed with relief. Gaveriel wasn't sure where Elva got her endless bounds of energy, but it was apparent that even she had her limits. The brown-haired girl was dipping her entire face into the running water, holding her breath for an impressive amount of time before surfacing and shaking her hair out before returning below the water.

Visora was leaning up against a tree, eyes fluttering as she breathed. Gaveriel and Ciara were used to the heat, but were still sweating a decent amount.

"So, what are you guys headed to Lavender for?" he asked conversationally, not really expecting Elva to hear, but directing the question to both of them.

Sure enough, it was Visora who answered. "We were supposed to be getting actual Pokemon experience out here—go figure," she said, laughing in a derisive way. "But we figure that Lavender's Pokemon tower might be a good place to check out some strong ones, too."

Gaveriel cocked an eyebrow. "The Pokemon tower? Wow, you're brave."

Visora grinned, seeming to regain her charisma. "What, a big strong man like you is afraid of the Pokemon tower?"

Gaveriel smiled benignly back. "Oh, terrified, absolutely."

Ciara laughed, joining them by the tree. "It's haunted, you know."

"Well, let's hope the only things that are "haunting" it are Gastlys and Haunters," she said, and stretched abruptly in mid-sentence, interrupting herself with a yawn. "Are we almost there?"

"Pretty close now," Gaveriel said. "It can't be more than a fifteen minute walk now."

"Well, let's get a move on… once the mermaid over there decides to breath," Visora tacked on, rolling her eyes. "I swear, if humans could breath water, she'd disappear into the ocean and I'd never see her again."

"Water trainer?" Gaveriel took a wild stab.

"You got it," Visora sighed. "I prefer plant types myself. I don't know, it's just I've never really _loved_ the water and all… I mean, it's _okay,_ but… oh, wonderful," she said, cutting herself off and laughing. "I sound like my sister."

"You sound like _my_ sister, too," Gaveriel added, which earned him a smack from Ciara. "Well, she _does._"

Elva decided to shake her head out again then, and Visora called, "Hey, Starmie, come _on_, we're going again."

The water-logged girl bounded up and shook her head out before carefully wringing the wet ends of her wavy hair out. Her hair was the type that curled when wet, and now it hung in many nicely-formed ringlets. "Gotcha!" she said cheerily, bounding over to them and spraying them with tiny beads of water in the process. Ciara shrank back, and Gaveriel laughed.

The four of them really _were_ dysfunctional, he thought. Ciara was a fire trainer all the way—she was obsessed with Vulpixes, Flareons and Growlithes as a child, and had a pyro streak a mile wide. Gaveriel always left it up to her to start the camp fires, as the girl had a knack for causing sparks with any substance she could get her hands on, a skill that served her both literally and metaphorically.

Gaveriel, on the other hand, was a rock trainer who occasionally took in a ground-type, since the two were similar enough. It really was amazing how the four of them played on each other's type weaknesses: Gaveriel could beat Ciara, who could beat Visora, who could beat Elva, who could beat him.

Deciding that he was reading far too much into the matter, Gaveriel climbed to his feet and stretched, hearing the satisfying crick-pop in his neck as he did so. "Well, we ready to book it? We'll have you guys in Lavender well before sundown if we make good time."

---------

True to his word, the four of them reached Lavender Town roughly twenty minutes later, when the sun was just considering sinking below the horizon for the day. Feeling out of place in the dismal town, Gaveriel stopped at the sign what welcomed people to the uninviting place and leaned against it.

"Well, this is where we get off," he said, giving the two girls a smile. "It's been a pleasure, and if you ever need anything, we're just a hike away."

Visora laughed at that, and he could tell that she knew they'd probably never see each other again. Gaveriel didn't know why it made him somewhat melancholy, but he had learned a long time ago not to read into _anything_ too much; he found the more he did that, the more he made embarrassing mistakes.

"Well, thank you for putting up with the long walk," Visora said. "It was a good work out, at the very least. And thank you for not going comatose under the onslaught of the demon-child's 'ten-million-two-hundred-and-fifty-three question attack', too."

"Hey!" Elva quipped indignantly at her side.

"Not a problem," Ciara said. "And, hey… if you guys ever want to help us out on some Team Rocket thwarting…" she threw a wink at them, and Visora and Gaveriel reacted exactly the same—they shot Ciara a look that clearly said "What the _heck?_"

Elva, on the other hand, seemed to light up like a string of Christmas lights at the idea. "REALLY? You'd let us help you? Oh, _Vi_, that would be so, _so_ cool! Oh, can we?"

"Um, Elva, dear, I do believe they were kidding, and even if they _weren't_, the answer would be no." Visora looked at Gaveriel and he suddenly realized that she'd saved him from getting into an argument with his sister. If she hadn't spelled the answer out so clearly he would have had to ask Ciara if she was serious, and she would have gotten defensive. Impressed at Visora's sudden act of kindness—through manipulation, yes, but for a kind purpose nonetheless—Gaveriel regarded her. They seemed to still be on uneasy terms, but at least they were undisputed equals—even if only they two knew it.

"Well, we'd better get going before it gets too dark," Gaveriel said offhandedly. "See you around, ladies. Visora, Elva." He acknowledged them each with a nod.

"See you, Gav and Ci," Elva said, seeming deflated at the denial of adventure.

"Laters," Ciara called in an uppity way that reminded Gaveriel for a second of Elva.

"Bye," Visora said, and Gaveriel noticed that she was looking at him exclusively.

With that said and done, the two sets of siblings turned their backs on each other and started on their respective roads, one heading into the fading sunset and one into the gathering twilight.


	11. Chapter 11 Orion

Chapter 11

The door to the Pewter City Pokemon Center pushed open with a cheery jingle from the silver bell affixed to its frame in red ribbon. In rushed a gust of frigidly cold air and sleeting rain, unusual for that time of the summer, followed by a miserably wet boy. He was soaked from the tips of his white-blond hair all the way down to his brown boots that _squelched_ as he stepped inside and forcibly shut the door behind him.

Orion shook out his head, sending drops flying everywhere, and stood, shivering, on the welcome mat for a moment while the excess water dripped off of him and into the spongy surface of the black fabric. Never one to track water and mess into a house that wasn't his own, he waited patiently for what felt like ten minutes before he swiped the bottoms of his boots on the mat and headed off to the front desk.

The woman there appeared to be doing a crossword puzzle. She had on wire-rim glasses of a strange pink-purple color, and looked up as he approached.

"Oh! My goodness, how long have you been standing there? Here," she said, fussing around behind the counter and pulling out two large, fluffy white towels from seemingly nowhere. "Take these, and dry yourself off a bit. You must be chilled to the bone."

It was a very nice gesture, something that reminded Orion of motherly concern, and he smiled. "Th-thank you, ma'am. I'm Orion Fremont… F-R-E-M-O-N-T… yes, that's right… and I'd like to room here for the night, if it's not too much trouble. My team would much appreciate a recuperation as well."

The woman smiled and accepted the slightly-wet pokeballs from him. It took him a few moments to detach all of them from his complicated-looking belt, a device he'd jerririgged himself, but eventually he handed over the last one. She examined them carefully and smiled.

"Quite smart of you, to label these. You wouldn't believe how many trainers come in here asking if we've seen a misplaced Pokeball… as if they don't know just how _many_ pokeballs get misplaced a day! Shame, really…" She slipped the balls into little pockets on what looked like a conveyer belt behind her and fastened each one in snug. Then she pressed an intriguing looking red button the size of a half-dollar—something right out of a sci-fi flick, Orion thought to himself—and the pokeballs zipped off behind a red curtain into the back regions of the Center's office. Orion knew they'd be waiting for him in the morning.

When the woman handed over a silver key attached to a keychain of a Chancey with a black "#33" attached to it, Orion almost collapsed in relief. "Just give us a buzz if you'd like your bed linens changed or need more towels in your room!"

Orion thanked the woman and headed off down the well-lit hallway. As he passed the rooms numbered 1-12, he examined closely the few rooms with the doors open. Inside each room looked the same: one single bed, one side table/dresser combo, a door (which Orion assumed was a bathroom) and a series of pegs in the wall. Very Spartan in its furnishings, but nonetheless charming and inviting.

Orion wouldn't have cared even if the beds were made of straw—it was a safe haven and a place to rest his head. When he reached room #33 and turned the key in the lock to push the door open, however, he found that he had a visitor.

Crouched in the corner of the room was a small purple Pokemon with two buck teeth that seemed too large for it, even considering that their kind's teeth were large to begin with. The Rattata's ears perked up as Orion entered the room and flicked on the light, and even as it was scurrying away he was reaching for one of the spare pokeballs he kept on him.

He didn't know why he didn't just let it get away. Maybe it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, or maybe it was because he was a normal Pokemon type trainer. But whatever it was he had chucked the chrome sphere at the retreating rodent's hindquarters in about two seconds flat. The ball missed target by about three inches—Orion's intention—and watched as the red light engulfed the creature nonetheless. Orion often times spent the money he earned from odd jobs around various towns on these "new" types of pokeball; the kind that made actually striking the creature with a pound of hard metal unnecessary.

Fully expecting the ball to pop back open and the Rattata to flee, Orion waited with bated breath. Then the ball stopped shaking and the flashing red light faded, however, he strolled over and picked it up.

"Well," he said, scratching his head. "That was lucky."

Placing the pokeball next to his dresser table, he wondered if the Rattata had been a level 2, which would explain the ease in which it was captured. Feeling a pang of remorse, he removed his sodden boots and tossed them in a corner. He hadn't really wanted to capture a baby Rattata and remove it from its family.

Unbidden, the image of his father's face rose in Orion's mind. _You fucking pansy,_ he'd probably be saying. _You'll_ never _have what it takes to be a Pokemon trainer. Why don't you go write more of your fucking retarded children's books._

Sighing, Orion flopped backwards onto the bed. He'd always known that his pacifistic nature had caused his father stress. Lt. Surge of Vermillion didn't want his son to be known as a fairy. As it were, Orion wasn't exactly the picture-perfect image of "manliness" in his father's eyes—but that hadn't been a problem until recently.

Surge seemed to be slowly losing his mind recently. That was saying a lot if even Orion believed it—he usually gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Yet, it was true; his father was going insane. It had started with the three-day long, nonstop training sessions that he had forced Orion to partake in. Orion figured it was just another method of his dad's to get him to enjoy smashing beer cans on his forehead and pimping around town… but then the month-long meetings began. His father would disappear, leaving a note and some cash (usually about twenty bucks) for his son. The hastily-scrawled letters would read the same thing every time: "Gone to an emergency meeting. Don't fuck up the house, and don't let anyone in the gym."

Orion's little red alarm bells hadn't even fully started blaring at _that._ But when his father came back home tousled, dirty, windblown—and _bloody_—at three a.m. one night two weeks ago, that had been the last straw. Orion had been up raiding the fridge for food that _wasn't_ energy drinks or frozen raw beef—a fruitless hope—when the screen door had opened very, very quietly. This wasn't like his father's usual gusto at all, so Orion had assumed he was being robbed. He remembered groping in the dark for the phone to call the police and instead nudging the blade of a very lethal kitchen knife he'd left out on the counter while cooking earlier that day and cutting his finger on it. Hissing, he'd pulled back.

A second later, a chain was pulled and the bare bulb in their kitchen was sparked to life, and in the flickering light Orion and Surge had regarded each other with wide, surprised eyes. Surge's entire right side was _caked_ in blood, and his combat boots were completely brown with dried mud. Some of the dark matter—mud or blood, Orion couldn't tell—was smeared across Surge's face as well. Only his black briefcase seemed untainted, and Orion couldn't recall his father ever _owning_ a briefcase.

In the silence that remained the two bleeding men had slowly come to their own separate conclusions. Orion knew that Surge had been trying to creep back into the house so as not to awaken Orion and be caught in that state—and Surge knew that Orion would begin to ask questions.

So he'd started yelling, thrown his briefcase to the floor and ordered Orion back up the stairs and into his bedroom. _Fucking brat, what the fuck are you doing sneaking around down here at three-fucking-thirty in the morning, fucking juvie!_

Orion had scrambled back up the stairs as if a stampeding herd of Taurus were hot on his trail.

And without even stopping to rest, he'd packed a backpack and climbed out the window. He didn't even know _where_ he was going, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew his father would find him in only a matter of time, and that the punishment would be great—but he didn't care. Whatever his father was a part of, Orion didn't want in. He didn't want any affiliation with a man who would return to his home soaked in blood. And in spite of his burning curiosity, Orion really _didn't_ even want to get to the bottom of it. He was satisfied to know that it was _bad._

Thoroughly exhausted from his seemingly endless train of thought, Orion drifted off to sleep in a comfortable bed for the first time in weeks.


	12. Chapter 12 Ciara

Chapter 12

Ciara and Gaveriel had finally made it back to their flat about an hour after sundown. The way _to_ Lavender had taken a long while as they had to accommodate two city-slickers, but the way _back_ had been downright awkward, even if they _had_ made good time.

The forest always made Ciara feel somewhat… claustrophobic, with its towering trees and virtually nonexistent open spaces. She'd often times try to get up and over the trees by climbing one of the tallest ones, and it was up on those highest boughs that she truly felt at peace. She was actually quite surprised the first time she'd scrambled her way up there—you really _could_ see just about everything from up there. She caught the tall skyscrapers in Celadon straight ahead, partly obscured by the obtrusive Silph Co. building in Saffron, where she also glimpsed the tops of the two Pokemon gyms. If she turned her head slightly to the right, she could see the ocean, a sure sign that Cerulean City was nearby. A bit to the left, and there was the majestic S.S. Anne cruise liner, the oldest boat in all of Kanto. Ciara wondered if the same captain ran it, but she somehow doubted the man was still alive.

Ciara couldn't see Pallet Town, Viridian City or Pewter City, but she knew they were there. If she looked directly out to the left she could see small traces of what she thought was Fuchsia City, but she couldn't be exactly sure.

And then, if she risked her neck and clung to the smaller, more delicate branches of the highest parts of the tree, she could see the illusive shadow of Cinnabar Island.

That was the place she'd go to, someday.

Right now, though, Ciara was loafing about outside their flat, laying on her back with her hands folded behind her dark-haired head. She was disturbed by something, but she'd never been great at introspection, and didn't know what it was. What she _did_ know was that this feeling of great unease had began plaguing her the moment Visora and Elva had turned their backs and started off towards dismal Lavender. That didn't add up at _all_, since Ciara had thought Elva was annoying and Visora was overbearing. She shouldn't be _missing_ the girls she'd only met that day, so that option was ruled out.

Rolling over on her stomach and sliding forward a bit to poke her head down into the flat, Ciara peeled her eyes for her brother. She found him in a shadowy corner, haunched over a stack of papers, struggling to sort through them in the dark. A pang of anxiety struck Ciara in the chest when she heard him draw a shaky, strained breath and sigh in frustration.

Honestly, she thought, pulling herself out of the flat and sitting up. There are times he seems older than most adults.

Gaveriel had been carrying the brunt of the weight of their lives for as long as Ciara could remember. She honestly wanted to help him, but they both knew that he was the one who really knew what he was doing. Gaveriel was a downright master of infiltration, sneak attacks and subtlety—Ciara's style was more fiery and in-your-face, and she preferred all-out raids to sneaky lurking and hushed whispers. She basically did whatever Gaveriel told her to do, and that had worked out fine so far.

But now she was worried about her brother's physical _health._ He was always like this—reading by the light of the feeble stars and ruining his eyes, trying to find a new lead instead of sleeping and eating, poring over documents with something bordering on obsession burning in his chocolaty brown eyes. Ciara had been somewhat surprised at how lively he'd been when Visora and Elva had turned up in their Rocket traps—he normally didn't crack jokes anymore, like he had when they were young. Ciara had _liked_ the reverted Gaveriel—somewhat mischievous and witty, actually talking, and—heaven forbid—_smiling._

And now he was back to the forty-year-old guy that she saw all the time.

Ciara had always been impulsive. This time was no different.

Pulling herself to her feet and sliding down into their flat, she shouted, "Gav, I want to get out of this place."

The hasty rustle of papers couldn't hide the fact that he'd been reading. Trying to act casual and like he was just thinking about going to sleep, Gaveriel stretched. "You just came in here, why would you want out?"

She frowned at him. "You _know_ what I mean, bro."

The half-smile faded from his face, and Ciara expected to see wrinkles over his tanned skin. Drawing a hand over his face, he sighed. "Yeah, I _do_ know what you mean, unfortunately. Ci," he paused, and scooted closer to her while he groped for words. "Ci, you _know_ why we're out here."

"Because it's secluded and Rockets have been sighted in this area," she said, quoting him word for word. "I know, I know. But dude, we've been here for what… three, four months now? Don't you think if there were still Rockets in here, we'd have _found_ them by now?"

Instead of continuing on the conversational path she'd wanted him to, Gaveriel regarded her carefully before muttering in an almost-whisper, "This is about those two girls, isn't it?"

Ciara mentally cursed herself for even _thinking_ for a moment that she could match Gaveriel in a conversational debate. "No, actually, it's not… but they _do_ have it a lot better than we do out here," she said, motioning with one hand to the crumbling dirt walls and disheveled stack of papers. "They move around, you know… they _see_ things and _do_ things and _train their Pokemon._ Good God, Gav, how _long_ has it been since we've had a Pokemon battle?"

"Those things can wait, and you _know_ it, Ci. We've been _through_ this already."

"I know, Gav. But this time I want to know _why._"

"What do you mean _why?_ We're trying to avenge father! Is that so hard to understand? Look," the slowly rising anger evaporated from his voice. He looked old again, and Ciara wanted to scream in frustration. "I know that this isn't fair to you. And we'll get out of here and into a real town soon, okay? I just need a few more weeks—"

"That's what you said three weeks ago, bro. I don't see why you can't do your stuff in a Pokemon Center. No one will pay attention to two kids with Pokemon. They'll think we're a couple of those losers who want to be Masters, or something. It'll be fine, bro." She paused for a moment, and then snuggled up next to him. "Please?"

"Ciara, don't start with that," he said, but she could feel his resolve crumbling. She'd gotten him to laugh with her losers comment _and_ brought up a lot of valid points. He was a sucker for valid points. And now that she was employing the puppy-eyes, it was only a matter of time. Ciara sometimes felt downright rotten for exploiting her power over Gaveriel like this—as his only living relative he could very rarely say no to her—but in this case it was truly for his own good.

"_Puh-leeeeeze?_"

"Ciara," he tried to struggle free.

"Please, Gaveriel? Please? Just for a few weeks!"

"_Okay, all right!_" he exclaimed, successfully pushing her off him. "Just let me finish up some stuff tomorrow and we'll go then, okay?"

After they shared a laugh and Ciara latched herself onto his midsection in a fierce hug, he whispered, "Okay. But only because you want it so badly."

"Why else would you do it?" she asked him, an impish smile playing across her face.

---------

The next morning Ciara had packed in about three minutes flat. Granted, she hadn't had a lot of things _to_ pack, with her three shirts, two pairs of pants and small bag of personal belongings and hygiene-related equipment, but she was still pretty proud. Now she was restlessly punching at thin air, keeping light on her feet and dodging blows from an imaginary opponent. She often times fought with nothing when she was agitated, as it kept her in shape and decently able to defend herself.

Gaveriel was the opposite of her in every way. Leaning up against a tree leisurely, flipping casually through an old newspaper and taking notes on a legal pad beside him, eyes half-lidded and sleepy in the sunlight, he was absolutely _maddening_ to the hyped-up girl a few feet away. She decided that she'd give him about thirty more seconds to finish whatever it was that he was doing before she dragged him by _force_ down the dirt path to Lavender Town.

Since that was where they were going, no matter _what_ Gaveriel had to say about the matter.

Thirty seconds came and went and Ciara rounded on her languid brother.

"Gav, time to gooo…" she said, peering into his face from over the edge of the ratty newspaper. You said you'd be done by the time the sun was high up!"

In response, he lifted the newspaper to cover her face and continued reading as if he hadn't heard her.

Livid, Ciara spat, "Hey! I'm talking to you—" before she realized that he was chuckling.

"I know, Ci. I'm done, anyway," he got to his feet, folded up the paper and placed it neatly back on top of a bundle of other documents nearby his packed bag. Gaveriel did everything meticulously neatly, whereas Ciara's hastily thrown together knapsack was bulging out at odd angles and had bits of clothing poking out from the zipper. "Where did you want to go?"

"I was thinking since it's so close by and no one ever really _goes_ there we could go to—"

"Lavender Town."

"Lavender Town—hey," she said, feigning innocence. "How'd you know?"

Gaveriel looked mildly irritated. "So this _is_ about following those two girls." It wasn't a question, but Ciara answered it like it was one.

" _No,_" she said with what she hoped was an accurate imitation of indignation. "I just wanted a place that was close by and secluded!"

Gaveriel rolled his eyes. "I'm sure. Look, we are _not_ interfering in those girl's lives, okay? They wouldn't want us tagging along with them, and we can't afford to be slowed down, anyway. We probably told them too much yesterday as it is."

"I didn't mean that!" Ciara said, but inside her heart was sinking a bit. Gaveriel sure didn't _act_ like he wanted to see the girls again—and Ciara was starting to wonder if maybe _she_ did. Granted, she hadn't felt any kind of remarkable bond with Elva or Visora, but they _were_ the only human beings they'd encountered and actually _talked_ to in a long, _long _time. Writing it off as that, she said, "So, we can go, right?"

"If you say so," Gaveriel said, regarding her carefully. "But remember, we do _not_ bug the girls."

"Wouldn't _dream_ of it," Ciara said offhandedly, already slinging her pack over her shoulder and starting off down the road. Even though she didn't realize it at the time, she was subconsciously narrowing down the exactly location of where the girls might be. "Now, hurry up, Slowpoke!"


	13. Chapter 13 Nija

Chapter 13

By the time Nija reached Viridian City, her spirits had been dampened considerably. She wasn't one to sink into self-pity, but it was sorely tempting now. All she wanted to do was find the Pokemon Center, heal up Charmander, make her first catch—assuming _that_ wouldn't go wrong, too—and get some sleep, in spite of the fact that it was only mid-afternoon.

Viridian City really _was_ much larger than Pallet Town, Nija decided. She'd been to Viridian with her mother once or twice as a kid, but had never actually been there alone. Now that she wasn't merely tagging along for a shopping trip she felt a sudden surge of freedom. She really _was_ free to do whatever the heck she wanted to.

But, first thing was first—she had to find the Pokemon Center.

It wasn't very hard, since they were the largest buildings in virtually all the towns they were in. The building itself was painted a very strange color of spring green, something that Nija couldn't decide if she liked or not. On one hand, it was very festive and appropriate for the town. On the other hand, she sort of felt like puking whenever she looked at it.

Inside, the accommodations were actually very nice, and she was spared having to look at vivid green. The woman at the counter gave her a key labeled "#15" complete with a smiling Chancey keychain, and Nija headed back to the room. About halfway there she stopped and impulsively slammed her palm into her forehead.

"_Jesus,_ Nija, stop feeling so freakin' _sorry_ for yourself! It's only Amaris!" she berated in a voice that was perhaps a tad too audible, as a few passerby glanced nervously at her. She ignored them, standing tall and rigid, hands balled in fists at her side, backpack strap clutched in her left one. "He's just a brat, and he caught you off guard, and he had more time to train with Pokemon than you did! Next time you see him you just gotta make sure you wipe the floor with him! And you're _never_ gonna get tough enough sitting around!"

Satisfied with putting herself in her place, Nija calmly continued her walk down the hallway until she reached a door with slightly cloudy brass numbers that read "#15" and turned the key in the lock to let herself into the room.

---------

Nija had decided to hang around Viridian longer than most newbie trainers did. Although she was sorely tempted to follow suit whenever she saw one of the trainers from Pallet coursing through the city in haste for the first couple of days, she restrained herself from blazing her trail after them. Instead, she hung around and purchased a map of Kanto (even though she'd memorized the route like the back of her hand) and trained Charmander like mad. The Pokemon actually was quite willing to beat the tar out of any wild Pokemon Nija encountered, and for a while they coexisted with each other peacefully, Nija allowing Charmander to attack things to its heart's content and Charmander allowing Nija to give it orders. It didn't disobey her like the first time, but it also seemed very arrogant and languid in the way it executed commands, sometimes pausing for nearly ten seconds before deciding to do what its master suggested. It frustrated Nija, but she was determined to keep a core of patience buried deep underneath her normally short tempter. She knew instinctively that blowing up at the Pokemon wouldn't make it like her any better.

It was during one of their massacre training sessions that Nija heard the kids laughing behind a low brick wall on the outskirts of Viridian.

Curious as to what the gaggle of boys found so interesting, Nija motioned for Charmander to follow her closer to the half wall. Instead, Charmander lead the way, once again displaying the maddening way it could follow directions and not follow them at the same time. Rolling her eyes, Nija followed.

The voices got clearer as they got closer, and all at once Nija got a bad feeling in her gut. Charmander seemed to mirror her emotions, as its tail flame spurted and crackled higher and a soft growl rose in its throat. Nija wanted to hiss at it to be quiet, but she somehow didn't think the boys could hear anything but their own self-assured laughter.

"Try again! I'm sure one of them will come off soon!"

"They're on pretty tight though, and what if someone comes over and sees us?"

"You're such a _wuss_, Devon, no one's gonna see us! And Nidoran horns are worth a fortune! My big brother says so."

Alarms went off in Nija's head and her face suddenly felt flushed and hot. Leaping forward with a sudden and impulsive recklessness, she burst through the bushes on the left of the wall and revealed herself to a circle of crouching boys a bit younger than she was. All of them leapt up and tried to pretend like they weren't doing anything, some of them trying to scatter but being held in place by others. One even moved his foot in front of the center of their circle to try to hide their crime, but Nija had seen enough.

A female Nidoran, only about level 4 judging by its size, was lying miserably on its side and kicking desperately at what appeared to be shoelaces tied around its feet. There were angry red gashes showing up fiercely on its lavender-blue skin, and a trickle of blood was seeping out from the base of its small horn.

The sheer premeditated air of the scene made Nija sick. This wasn't Amaris leisurely throwing rocks at Pidgeys that just so happened to be nearby where he was at the time—this was a bunch of humans ganging up on a defenseless Pokemon and trying to dismember it. Her stomach turning over in a way that made it hard for her to breath, Nija conjured up all of her rage—something that wasn't hard at all—and yelled.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing, huh?" One of the boys stifled a laugh and Nija rounded on him, striding forward and grabbing him with both hands at the front of his orange t-shirt. "You think it's funny, do you? I'll show you funny, you jerk!" She punched him square in the chin and chaos broke out. She felt a sneakered foot connect roughly with her ribs, which sent little white sparks flying in front of her vision and swung out blindly, elbowing one of her attackers in the face. She swung around and happened to notice a head near her stomach and took advantage, locking the boy in a headlock.

"Charmander! Get the Nidoran out of here," she said, _oomph_ing as a fist connected with her abdomen. The boys seemed to be holding back, and Nija exploded again without meaning to. "What, you won't fight a _girl_ who's attacking you but you'll pick on a Pokemon that hasn't done _anything_ to you? Is that it? Punks!"

Charmander, who had been setting fire to one of the boy's pants while ripping its teeth into the leg of another, obeyed her instantly for possibly the first time all week. It disengaged itself from the screaming boys and bit through the bounds on the Nidoran in one swift motion. The small rodent seemed terrified, but also too weak to move, much less escape. Charmander hefted it onto its back and was about ready to scamper off when it looked back at Nija. Teal eyes met her own, and she could read his thoughts as clearly as if she were a telepath—_You gonna be all right here?_

"Go!" Nija grunted, shoving a boy off her midsection. "Go on!"

"Lady, chill out!" one of them cried, backing away and seeming ready to abandon his friends. "We were just trying to make some cash! They're just Pokemon!"

Nija forgot that she was about to run after the orange lizard and threw herself at the most recent offender. "Just Pokemon, huh?" Snaking one hand in the boy's messy brown hair, she yanked. Curling the boys arm around behind his back at an impossible angle with her other, she pulled. "How does it _feel_?"

The other boys took maybe a second to regard the insane girl and their struggling companion before they turned on their heels and raced off in the direction of Viridian City. The boy beneath Nija was screaming and crying, and finally she was able to loosen her grip and let go. She was shocked and numb, surprised at her own capacity for vengeance and violence, but oh, _so_ satisfied from it.

"You _think_ about it before you try to do something like that to a Pokemon again," she said. "You'll meet people way worse than me."

Pulling herself to her feet and brushing the sticks and leaves from her violet shirt, she shakily headed in the direction she thought Charmander had gone, leaving the whimpering boy behind her to pull himself to his knees and nurse his arm.

Sure enough, about five minutes later she found Charmander and the Nidoran behind a growth of shrubs. The Nidoran seemed already recovering, but Nija didn't trust that it would be all right out on its own so soon. She was about to remove a spare t-shirt from her backpack to wrap it in when she hesitated. It would be a _lot_ easier if she captured the Pokemon first, and in its dormant state in the Pokeball it wouldn't be in pain until she could get it back to the Center.

Nija instinctively glanced to Charmander, as if waiting her Pokemon's opinion on this matter. Charmander was eyeing the Nidoran worriedly, and met her gaze evenly before glancing at the Pokeballs at her waist. After a tense moment Charmander nodded to her and Nija's fingers closed around one of the vacant balls that she kept on the right side to differentiate them from her occupied ones.

As she knelt near Nidoran, seeing its pale violet eyes widen as it squirmed desperately away from the oncoming metal sphere, Nija hesitated, her throat working frantically. Capturing a Pokemon after an intense battle had been one thing—could Nija really do this?

Steeling herself and attempting to confirm her conviction that Nidoran would be much better off once captured, Nija pressed the ball gently down on Nidoran's small flank, letting out a small gasp of awe even though she was well used to the wonder of technology that engulfed it. The ball barely shuddered before laying still on the grass.

She noticed that Charmander was staring at her and smiled weakly at it, giving it the thumbs up. It stared at her for a while longer with an unreadable expression, and then, amazingly, lifted one of its small orange-clawed hands in front of her. Nija stared at it for a moment, and Charmander waved its hand in the air impatiently. Uncertain, Nija knelt down and lifted her hand in the same manner, and Charmander slapped her palm with a small _smack._ After a second, a smile broke out onto Nija's face… and then a giggle bubbled forth from her throat. In a matter of seconds she was laughing appreciatively with her whole body, even though it felt like it was ripping up her ribcage to do so.

Her Pokemon had just _high-fived_ her.

---------

It was about a week later when Nija made her first _real_ catch. She, Charmander, and the newest member of their team, the Nidoran, were out training in that same patch of grass. Charmander had advanced to level seven or eight, something that made her _extremely_ happy, and the Nidoran was level five. Overall, she thought she was doing pretty well.

That was when the level six Pidgey attacked. Well, okay, so it hadn't really _attacked_ them so much as Nija had almost stepped on it. But once it caught sight of the intruders it kicked up a flurry of sand and dirt in their eyes and screeched in a very distracting and threatening way. Charmander was ready to completely own the uppity bird, but Nija stopped it. It really wasn't often at all that one came across a level five or higher Pokemon out here, and for the first time since she'd reached Viridian Nija thought of the fourteen unused pokeballs she was carrying around in her backpack.

"Scratch!" She'd shouted, and Charmander had been more than happy to oblige. The Pidgey had actually done quite a number on the reptile, and Nija had just been considering retreating from the fray when Charmander had spun around and regarded her evenly. Its health was low, but the energy in its small form was enough to make Nija reconsider. She made one more round of attacks on the bird before chucking an enlarged pokeball at it. It had barely put up a struggle before seceding into the pokeball and becoming the third member of her arsenal. The celebration that had gone on that afternoon was certainly something else—Nija went out and bought Charmander as much human food as it could eat, something that the lizard was all too fond of, and rewarded Nidoran equally well with its more preferred Pokechow.

After catching the Pidgey, Nija got to thinking about leaving Viridian again. Granted, she wasn't really in such a mad hurry at the moment, but she vaguely wondered if maybe she _should_ be. She didn't really know where the other trainers from Pallet were, but she could only assume that some of them were already done beating the Pewter Gym Leader, and perhaps even more of them already in Mount Moon or possibly Cerulean. She knew she shouldn't base her own journey off of others, but her competitive side couldn't help but cringe at how long she had been loitering around one place. Pokemon trainers were, after all, nomadic beings.

It was about two weeks since she'd arrived in Viridian, and for the first time since the incident with the Nidoran and group of boys, she thought of Amaris. It was amazing how easily the image of his rusty gold-brown hair and teal eyes could pop up in her head whenever she felt inadequate or unsure of herself and her direction in life. Amaris always seemed so _sure_ of himself—if there was one thing Nija actually envied about the insufferable brat, it was that. He never seemed to second guess himself, always forging ahead unblinkingly, never even _conceiving_ that he could be, perhaps, wrong. Heaven forbid the almighty Amaris Drake be _wrong._

Just thinking about his self-satisfied smirk caused a new wave of hot anger in Nija. Sitting down and tapping her fingers against a stone bench outside the Pokemon Mart that she'd just visited to stock up on Potions, she thought. Charmander seemed to sense her distress and hopped up on the bench next to her, sitting companionably beside her. If one good thing had come from lingering in Viridian, it was the understanding she seemed to have reached with her Pokemon. Granted, it still seemed far too independent to ever fully obey her, but they had learned how to muddle through most battles without ticking each other off _too_ much. Nija was even getting used to the couple-second delay that Charmander seemed to like to tease her with.

If Nija hadn't been so wrapped up in thought, she might have noticed the four boys crouching behind a stack of shipment crates nearby sooner. As it was, she noticed them moments before they sprung, leaping out from behind the box and slinging what looked like pokeball-sized lumps of paint at a boy just coming into the threshold of the city. The odd thing about the paint was that it didn't stain the thrower's hands at all—in fact, it appeared to be wrapped in thin plastic. When it hit target, however, greens, blues, reds, and golds exploded in bright vengeance all over the newcomer.

Getting to her feet and seeing the four boys dart off giggling before the paint-drenched guy could fully recover, she realized they were the same boys from before, the ones who had been blatantly torturing Nidoran. Rising to chase after them and changing her mind—listening to her better judgment for once—she approached the sputtering figure at the head of town.

He was certainly a strange sight to behold, even disregarding the now multicolor state of his clothing and skin. His thick, golden-blond spiked hair was dyed brilliant, aggressive green at the tips, something that Nija was certain had been there before the paintball attack. His eyes were cornflower blue and very large, probably from surprise, and his attire—well, that was certainly unconventional, too. He worse a long-sleeved white… or, formerly white shirt under a bright orange tank top and a pair of dark green cargo pants with the strangest cut: one knee-length leg and one that reached all the way down to his sneakered foot.

Taking in his bizarre appearance in about a second, Nija was temporarily put out of conversational commission. At any rate, the guy looked awfully putout, and she felt bad for him.

At her heels, Charmander gave what sounded like a snort. Rolling her eyes, Nija went over to help.


	14. Chapter 14 Jason

Chapter 14

Jason had spent a lot of time with Evalina and her remarkable collection of Pokemon. Granted, she didn't refer to them as her "collection," and actually seemed quite perturbed when Jason did. Jason wasn't quite sure why she was being so nice to him, feeding him and Bulbasaur and allowing him to ask all the questions he wanted about her… friends, as she called the Pokemon that lived with her. Whatever the reason was, however, Jason was grateful.

He tried to train Bulbasaur over the two-week period, but the Pokemon only seemed to get more and more stubborn. It certainly seemed to _adore_ Evalina, however—he often found it sleeping in her lap. He asked her one day, "How the _heck_ do you get Pokemon to like you so much?" to which she had responded, "I treat them the same way I treat everybody else." He was about to say that that's what _he_ did too, and Bulbasaur still seemed ready to eat his face, when he stopped himself. The truth was that he wouldn't really order his mother to attack things and shout in frustration and pull at his hair when she didn't. But then again, his mother wasn't a Bulbasaur. He supposed Evalina's charm with Pokemon came from the fact that she was a breeder and not a trainer.

Jason didn't have anything against Pokemon breeding. It just wasn't his forte. He couldn't picture staying in one place for his whole life, feeding Pokemon and watching them make babies and never getting any adventure, _ever,_ and he knew he wouldn't be able to bring a fully-functional breeding ground with him all across the globe during his travels. So, his love for Pokemon and his desire to make some lasting mark on the world had left him with the only other alternative—training. It wasn't that Jason was hell-bent on battling Pokemon and making them into buff little mini-machines of perfection that could steamroller any trainer that crossed his path; he merely wanted to be an excellent trainer and spend as much of his time traveling and traversing with Pokemon as he could.

Evalina understood this well enough, although she herself didn't necessarily approve of using Pokemon to beat the daylights out of each other. In fact, she seemed rather squeamish towards the idea of the creatures that inhabited their world really "belonging" to anyone. Jason wondered if she was object to pet goldfish, too, but had stamped the mean thought from his head prematurely. It wasn't his place to judge the girl who'd so readily taken him in.

One afternoon when Jason was out "training" with Bulbasaur (more like watching Bulbasaur attack random rocks and trees of its own volition entirely apart from his commands) Evalina had joined them and sat some disatnace away, observing Jason's ill attempts at making it look like he _meant_ for Bulbasaur to march over to him ceremoniously and kick dirt up all over his shoes.

"Ah, excellent! A great, uh, Sand… Attack." The cover-up died halfway through as both he and Evalina knew that Bulbasaurs didn't learn Sand Attack. He winced as Evalina's face contorted in a way that showed very plainly that she was doing her best not to laugh, and muttered, "But next time don't aim it at _me._"

"May I suggest you ask him to attack rather than demand?" her voice called over to him from over the grassy plains. Jason frowned at her, feeling rather small under her scrutiny and shrugging.

"Yeah, I guess it can't do any harm, right?" His arms were covered in what felt like hundreds of small pieces of surgical tape that Evalina had leant him after he'd gotten on the wrong end of one of Bulbasaur's Razorleaf attacks.

"So, dude, what say you to a quick vine whip to demonstrate your skills?" Jason tried, stuffing his hands in his pockets and glancing coolly off to the side, trying to look as though it honestly didn't matter to him one way or another. Bulbasaur's red eyes were regarding him in what looked like suspicious spite, and after an indeterminable moment, Bulbasaur attacked a point not two inches from Jason's left foot.

Jason yelped and leapt away from the spot of crushed grass and upturned earth, shooting a venomous glare at Bulbasaur and failing at getting his left hand out of his pocket at all. He off balanced himself, only able to use one arm, and fell over.

Evalina wasn't laughing at him, thankfully. He figured he'd suffered enough of an ego beating without hearing her chuckling softly nearby. Instead, he saw her get up from her spot of grass through upside-down vision and near him, looking as though she were walking on the green, grassy ceiling.

"Well, he did listen to you, didn't he?"

The sentence was so absurd and ludicrous that Jason _had_ to laugh, and after a moment Evalina joined in too, although it seemed nearly against her will. Heck, even _Bulbasaur_ looked mildly amused, although Jason mused that it was most likely a sadistic pleasure derived from Jason's misfortune.

---------

Ever since he had arrived at the house Carey had avoided Jason like the plague. After their awkward "hello" a few weeks earlier the girl had been scarcer than a Legendary Mew, popping up in random places out of the corner of his eye and startling Jason into a hair-on-end state of fright, but vanishing before he could turn around and spot her. It really _was_ disconcerting, and he was starting to develop a twitch under his left eye, something that plagued him when he was under stress. He kept meaning to ask Evalina if her sister had some kind of freakish psychic ability like his mother, but never got around to it.

The difference between Carey and her cousin was striking. Jason found that talking to Evalina was much easier than talking to other girls had ever been in his life. Evalina almost didn't seem like a girl at _all_—and at the same time she was the damn _girliest_ girl in the world. She liked flowers and cute things and giggled a lot (something that disconcerted him greatly and made him want to go and lift weights to prove his masculinity), but she also wasn't afraid to dig her hands into the mud when she was gardening or handle a psychotic Rattata, receiving a lot of mean-looking bites in the process. Jason decided that he _admired_ her, something that he only really reserved for his mother and Pokemon trainers leagues stronger than he was.

The fact remained that Jason just wasn't _good_ with most girls. In school he'd been utterly abused by pretty much every female on campus, and those he tried to befriend would smack him across the face if he said something wrong. He still had no idea why Suzie had decided to punch him in the second grade when he noted that she looked like the type of girl who would get along well with his bug collection.

Evalina liked bugs. Evalina liked bugs so much that she hadn't even batted an eye when she'd found a host of Caterpies and other various non-Pokemon insects invading the lowest shelf of her food pantry. She'd chucked the spoiled cereal and noodles outside for the creatures to enjoy more fully even as Jason had washed his hands in scalding hot water. There was something about finding maggots in the cereal one had been digging their hand around in, fully intending to ingest that rubbed him the wrong way. Evalina had agreed that it was troubling to lose so much inventory that wasn't intended for Pokemon consumption, but hadn't expressed any real disgust over the incident one way or another. As she put it, "So long as it's getting eaten by someone, it's not wasted, right?"

"So, if you leave a three-course gourmet meal out in a compost heap and let it rot, it won't really be going to waste, because technically microscopic bacteria-type things are eating it, right?"

Evalina had cuffed his ears in a good-humored way and laughed at him, calling him mean for picking on her, and he knew that she hadn't been offended by his statement. It was a nice feeling.

Even though Jason was thoroughly enjoying himself, he knew he had to leave soon. He'd held up his journey a whole lot by staying there, no matter how nice it was, and he was absolutely _itching_ to beat Brock and win a Boulder Badge. The situation with Bulbasaur was looking dismal, too, and Jason had decided that the only way it would get better was through time. And training… something he wasn't going to get much of around here, as he somehow suspected that Evalina wouldn't take kindly to his randomly beating up her friends.

So the next morning he packed up his backpack and poked Evalina in the shoulder while she was washing dishes. Without even turning around she said, "You'll be leaving us today, I assume?"

Slightly surprised, Jason sputtered out, "Y-Yeah, actually. I gotta get started, I'm never gonna beat Brock if I stay around Pallet all the time."

"All right, take some sandwiches for the road, will you?"

Jason noted that Evalina sounded sort of apprehensive/sad, although which one he couldn't tell. There was also a strange note of detached remoteness in her tone that didn't quite match up with her normal air of happy agreeableness. Struck by an impulse, he hugged her tightly from behind and said, "Thanks for everything… is it okay if I write you sometime?"

The sudden change in the slight girl's disposition spoke volumes, and Jason knew that he'd done something good. She hugged him back with surprising strength (Jason was concerned peripherally as he felt one of his ribs bend oddly) and cried, "Of course! I'd love to hear how your travels go." She pulled back, both her hands on his shoulders and fixed him with a serious gaze. "And you simply _must_ promise to visit us again."

Jason had been wondering what she meant by _us_, but didn't have to wait long for an explanation—a small, tentative poke to his ribs startled him sufficiently to raise gooseflesh on his arms, and he tweaked out entirely as little Carey fixed him with a very serious, very penetrating indigo-blue stare that didn't at all match with her emotionless proclamation of wanting to see him again very soon.

---------

Jason had decided to put Bulbasaur back in its pokeball for the rest of the walk through to Viridian City. He'd had to sneak up on it, as the thing couldn't _stand_ being in the contraption for some reason, and he knew that it would be livid with him when he next let it out, probably saving up a few presents of the Razor Leaf variety for him. He shuddered as he thought of all the scratches he would receive.

Viridian City was remarkably close to where Evalina lived, perhaps a thirty-minute walk. While he meandered the pathway that was somewhat overgrown with random weeds and plants (Jason paused here and there to do his civic duty and clear the nearly indecipherable parts) he began to compose a letter to Evalina already in his head.

_Dear Evalina,_ he began, kicking a tangle of vines aside and discovering a small plaque set into the ground that read "Viridian City: 3 miles," _How've you been? I know I only left three minutes ago, but a lot can happen in three minutes!_

"Wow," Jason muttered as he continued on his way. " _That_ doesn't sound too pathetic, now…"

_I've reached the Pokemon Center now,_ he speculated, skipping from the uneventful present to the future of infinite, wondrous, glamorous possibilities. _Bulbasaur's looking healthy and happy. He's had a sudden change of heart and is so loyaly devoted to me that he skipped the Ivysaur stage altogether and is now an ass-kicking Venusaur. We've beaten Brock already, in spite of the fact that we're not even in Pewter yet. In fact, we've beaten them all. I'm on my way to the Indigo Plateau—I'll send a postcard and visit as soon as I'm done wiping the floor with Lance!_

Jason laughed at the idiocy he was entertaining, coming to the hardest part of his letter: the closing.

_Yours truly, Jason._

_Sincerely, Jason._

_Jason Fremont._

_That guy you once let stay at your house for three weeks._

_Love, Jason…?_

"You're a basket case, man," Jason muttered, shaking his head and kicking off some more overgrowth. The path was in deplorable state. "Your letter will more than likely be 'Evalina, Bulbasaur was so pissed at being locked in his Pokeball that he took it out on me in the form of lots of very tiny, very sharp leaves. Please send me some of that medical tape you have. Thanks much.'"

It was a very entertaining pastime, and in what seemed like no time at all he'd reached Viridian City. It was upon him very suddenly, and he assumed that it was due to his enviable skill at zoning out that he hadn't noticed it looming on the horizon for the last stretch of path. He took a moment to admire the city before taking his first tremulous step into the threshold of new promise—

… And was abruptly pelted with paintballs.

Sputtering, shouting and nearly falling flat on his back from shock, Jason made a wild swipe in the air and by chance caught a paintball in mid-descent, only succeeding in bursting it in his bare hand and spraying red paint all over the place. After the hostilities ceased he was left to swipe the stuff out of his eyes and spit it out of his mouth. _Well,_ he thought. _Nice welcome committee here. Dear Evalina, I've just been attacked by hooligans wielding paint._

Eventually he noticed that there was a girl standing in front of him. She was staring at him with a strange expression, like someone who was forced in front of something quite scary against her will. Jason realized that the pokeball he held in his hand must have fallen sometime during the attack, and as he was looking around the ground for it, noticed—with no small amount of dread—that Bulbasaur had gotten out. The device must have fallen button-down. Ignoring Jason's feeble order to heel, Bulbasaur trotted over to a crouching orange lizard at the girl's feet. A Charmander, Jason realized, and his attentions were immediately drawn away from trying to scrub his face clean.

"Hey, that's your Pokemon, isn't it?" he asked the girl, who was still regarding him uneasily. She looked nice enough—like she couldn't decide between asking if he needed help or chuckling. She had flyaway black hair that looked somewhat messy and sun-damaged, but as if she'd tried to pull a comb through it earlier in the day. Her eyes were an almost-violet shade of blue, darker than his by quite a few shades. He assumed they got their lavender-like coloring from the well-loved violet t-shirt she was wearing.

After a pause, the girl nodded. "Yeah, he's mine. Your name is…?"

Jason didn't hear her at first, as his attentions had been recaptured by the glowing flame at the tip of the Charmander's tail. After a few seconds however—and the restated question from the confused girl—he snapped out of it and responded. "Sorry—the name's Jason. Jason Fremont." He allowed his normal grin to slide back into place and extended a hand to shake, a split second before he realized that it was the one absolutely soaking in paint. Lowering that one and raising the other, he smiled sheepishly.

For a moment, he thought it would be a repeat of the Suzie incident of the third grade. The girl certainly didn't look like she knew what to make of him. Instead, however, a reluctant smile broke out over her face and she shook his hand firmly. "I'm Nija. Ikira."

"Nija? Funny name," Jason commented offhandedly. "Sounds kind of like 'I kneed ya in the face,' or something."

The girl's smile disappeared into a look that said very clearly "where the _hell_ did that come from?" A minute later she was laughing out loud, and said in a giggle-fit voice, "Hey, y'know that's funny you should mention that, I just did that to some idiot the other day!"

"No kidding?" Jason said, squeezing the leftover paint from the tips of his hair. "I hope it was one of the jerks who just turned me into a Monet."

"Actually," Nija said, smiling at him and relaxing, "It was. You wouldn't believe the jerks those guys are. But you really look like you could use a shower… c'mon, the Pokemon Center's right over this way."

"Awesome," Jason said, shaking the excess paint from his arms and legs. "That would be great."

As they headed off towards a building the color of Jason's dyed hair, he noticed that Charmander and Bulbasaur seemed to be becoming great friends, leading the way far ahead of their two human companions. He wondered dully if the plant Pokemon liked _everyone_ except for him.

---------

Later on that night, after Jason had changed out of his paint-splattered clothing and into an oversized white t-shirt and pair of jean shorts, Nija and he sat talking over cups of steaming hot cocoa in the main lobby of the Pokemon Center. Bulbasaur and Charmander feasted on Pokechow out of porcelain bowls courtesy of the Center. Jason found it remarkable how many things Nija and he had in common—they both had never known their fathers, although Nija's mother was adoptive, both wanted to become Masters since before they knew how to count and both had no idea why there was even a difference between Ground and Rock Pokemon. Jason wondered if the girls around Saffron were just psychotic—so far he'd met two girls in two weeks that he genuinely got along with.

Their Pokemon really seemed to have hit it off, too. They were muttering to each other in growls and snorts, occasionally muttering something that sounded like a language. Jason had often times wondered if Pokemon had a universal language they all spoke to each other, as he'd never met two Pokemon who couldn't communicate with one another.

"So, you headed to the Viridian Forest after this?" Nija asked him. Snapping out of his reverie, Jason stretched back into his seat.

"Yep. You?"

"Same." Nija took a long sip of her cocoa, and winced as it burned her tongue. "You were there in Pallet a few weeks ago, right?"

"Yups," Jason said, puffing his chest slightly in pride. "Tenth from first in line."

"Oh dang, lucky…" Nija lamented, running her hand through her now-tangled black hair and abruptly getting it stuck. "I was dead last. Lost track of time while I was doing last-minute research."

"Wow, that sucks," Jason said. "You seem to really get along great with your Pokemon, though."

"Err…" Nija coughed to cover up what sounded like _yeah, right_. "To be honest, our partnership could use some improvement."

Jason mentally chalked up yet _another_ thing he and the girl had in common. "How so?"

"Well, for one thing, this guy doesn't seem to like the whole taking-orders thing," Nija began, starting a checklist on her fingers. "Two, he does this weirdo thing where he _waits_ like three or four seconds before he listens to me… if he's not doing things his way, that is. He'll just stand there and kind of freak me out a little, cause I think he's just gonna ignore me and go bonkers on whoever we're fighting, and _then_ he executes the attack. I dunno, I guess it's not technically _dis_obeying, so I can't get mad at him, but still, it's _annoying_ as heck." Charmander had looked up at her during the course of this rant session and glared. "Yeah, that's right; I'm talking about _you_, buddy." She said indignantly. The Pokemon rolled its eyes—a habit Jason noticed its master did, too—and went back to its Pokechow.

"Such attitude," she commented offhandedly. "How's your Bulbasaur?"

"A _nightmare_," Jason said. "Honestly, I'm surprised he hasn't attacked me yet today." Bulbasaur looked up innocently from its bowl. "He won't even _listen_ to me. He doesn't even _pretend_ to. Really, all he cares about is eating, sleeping, and beating me up. I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship or something!"

"Wow," Nija said, regarding the leafy Pokemon with a furrowed brow. "He seems so mild-mannered."

"Don't be fooled," Jason hissed under his breath with a theatric flare. "He's _eeevil_."

Nija snorted into her hot cocoa and gagged. "Ah jeez, you're trying to _kill_ me!"

"Such a drama queen," Jason said, grinning cheekily. Noticing the time on the clock—eleven p.m.—Jason was suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue. "I think I might have to head in for the night," he murmured under his breath, stifling a yawn. "I was thinking about heading through the Viridian Forest tomorrow morning after I stock up on some stuff from the PokeMart."

Nija bit her lip. "Ah, okay. That's cool. I was gonna start off tomorrow, too. I've been loitering around Viridian City for _way_ too long."

"Cool," Jason said, and frowned. He felt like he should say something. Unsure of what it was, he shrugged it off and tapped Bulbasaur on the head. The Pokemon brushed his hand off with one long vine and haughtily started off down the hallway in front of him. Jason looked back at Nija and pointed at the Pokemon's retreating back as if to say _see what I mean? _Nija laughed openly and shook her head.

That night as Jason lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he realized what he wanted to say. The next morning, assuming he could catch her before she got out into the forest, he'd ask her if she wanted to stick with him through the trek. The forest was a pretty nasty place, and Jason was a firm believer in safety in numbers, even though he didn't really like traveling with people. _Besides_, he told himself as he shifted positions in an attempt to get comfortable, _she's a girl… it wouldn't be good if she were out there on her own._


	15. Chapter 15 Azrael

Chapter 15

All in all, Azrael couldn't complain about the way things were going.

The next day Murkrow had returned with not a pamphlet from Cerulean's gym door, but the whole damned _box_ of them. Azrael had been laughing out loud, rewarding Murkrow liberally and wishing that she'd been more specific in her request. However, no one could argue that the Pokemon had certainly delivered. With her competence proven to her mother, Azrael was allowed to pack her things and set a date to go out into the world a week from that day.

That had been a week ago. In the meantime, Azrael had packed. She didn't really have to think hard on what to bring with her—Azrael had never owned very many things, and decided to go Spartan for her journey to make the commute easier on her back. Three turtlenecks in green and black, three lighter t-shirts of the same shades, her most comfortable pairs of jeans and cargo pants with seemingly endless pockets, all her savings from birthdays and Christmas, undergarments and socks galore (courtesy of her mother), and a large jacket (also courtesy of her mother, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of July). Remarkably she'd been able to fit all of that in one saddlebag, although it was overstuffed.

Azrael had decided _not_ to tell her mother about the shuriken she'd found in the storage room, but she had removed it carefully—nicking her arm in the process—and wrapped it carefully in a grey cloth, storing it in her music box. The box was one of the few feminine things she owned, carved out of mahogany and inlaid with lighter designs in oak. The scene depicted the "haunted" Pokemon tower in Lavender Town, complete with Ghastlys and Haunters drifting around with their mouths and eyes open like dark holes.

Her father had carved it for her, and—even though Azrael's mother had thought it was a terribly macabre thing to give a young girl—she loved it.

Even now she was reluctant to leave it behind, even though she'd promised her mother that she'd be back within a two-month time period. She was accustomed to seeing it every morning, and often times would contemplate its worn-smooth surface when sleep eluded her at night. It was so intricate that she almost always found some new detail each time she studied it.

Now she replaced it on her shelf and studied her room. It was fairly empty, as she'd never had very many material possessions as a child, but there was a certain air of well-loved comfort that Azrael knew she wouldn't find anywhere else.

She closed the door and heaved an unwelcome sigh. She had acted over-confident and in complete control in front of her mother, but the fact remained that the girl had never wandered farther than her forest, Viridian City, or Pallet Town in her life. Once, when she was too young to remember, they'd all lived in Fuchsia City—but it hardly counted, as she couldn't remember a thing about it.

Now she was about to embark on her own journey, flying solo in the truest sense of the word for the first time. She couldn't deny that the thought of _true_ independence lifted her spirits like nothing else—but she also couldn't deny how apprehensive she was. Living alone with no one but her mother had rubbed off on her a bit—she was, indeed, as antisocial as they came.

Azrael's mother was waiting for her at the door. Her eyes were brimming with unshed tears, as Azrael had known they would be. For a moment they stood there, both regarding each other with new respect; Azrael, for being old enough to stand on her own, and her mother for being big enough to let her.

Then something clicked, and for the first time in years they truly hugged each other, neither one of them stilting or awkward. The embrace lasted for a long while, neither of them saying anything or feeling that they needed to. When Azrael pulled away, she, too, felt almost like crying.

Returning her bag to her shoulder, she started out into the afternoon, with her mother's voice calling after her, "You be careful, now!"

"Wouldn't dream of doing anything else," Azrael called back over her shoulder, waving and giving her a reassuring smile.

---------

It took Azrael maybe ten minutes to get to Viridian City, and another three hours before she'd wound her way through Viridian Forest to Pewter City. She decided to stop there for the night, since trying to make her way blind through Mount Moon didn't seem like a great idea. She figured that it was a good idea to heal up her team and get her mission plan set up for a while, and she didn't mind idling in Pewter for two or so days—but the thought of staying in one place for longer than that daunted her. She was sure that her mother thought she was still in Viridian exploring the outskirts of the town, but Azrael was blazing down her path with the haste of someone on a life-or-death mission.

The Pokemon Center in Pewter City was _much_ larger than the one in Viridian had been, offering much more room and board for the night. Azrael checked herself into a room, silently thanking whatever corporation was supporting these places and allowing them to stay free of charge, and picked up her key from the front desk.

Halfway down the hallway, someone crashed into her head-on.

Although Azrael had always been quick on her feet, she was tired beyond belief from the trek through the forest and was knocked flat on her back. Her bag went flying down the corridor, and all at once a boy with very blond hair and very wide eyes was kneeling beside her. Lifting her head from the ground, Azrael stared at him, taking a moment to comprehend the string of words he was bombarding her with.

"I'm _so_ sorry, ma'am, here, let me help you up, are you all right? I really _am_ sorry, I never watch where I'm going, shouldn't have been running indoors like that, is this your bag? I'm sorry, did you hit your head hard?"

"Um—" Azrael found herself pulled to her feet with surprising ease. The boy was about six or eight inches taller than her, but he had _still_ lifted her like she weighed little more than the bag he also picked up and dusted off from the ground. "I'm okay, really. It's all right. Yeah, that's mine," she said, taking the offered bag and returning it to her shoulder. "It's okay."

He didn't seem to hear her. "Are you sure you're feeling okay? I hit you pretty hard."

"Yes, I am _fine._ Where were you off to in such a hurry?" she tried, desperate to get him off the topic of her health.

He seemed to remember all of the sudden, and an expression of utter horror crossed over his smooth features. "Oh, that's right. My Rattata got away," he said, peering anxiously down the hall. "Have you seen it?"

Azrael shook her head in a negative, and the, inexplicably, "Do you need help finding it?"

The boy looked surprised for one second, and then smiled. "That would be great."

---------

The boy, who had introduced himself as Orion, lead Azrael back out into the lobby of the Pokemon Center. There they proceeded to look beneath the benches and tables—much to the confusion of their fellow patrons—in search of the boy's violet rat. Orion was babbling incessantly all the while, glancing over his shoulders occasionally and reflexively twitching when Azrael moved around him and surprised him by turning up in a different spot than he'd last seen her.

Overall, he looked like someone who had something to hide.

Azrael was getting more and more uneasy by the minute, but, never one to go back on a promise, she held true to her word and searched for his Pokemon with him—although she made any excuse to be on the _other_ side of the room from him.

When he finally exclaimed, "Ah-HAH! Ratty, _there_ you are!" some odd half hour later, Azrael was overcome with relief. She was tired and uncoordinated, in dire need of some shuteye, but forced a vague smile in Orion's general direction when she heard his proclamation of triumph. The Pokemon seemed genuinely all right with being captured again, even though it seemed to go against its nature to be in captive.

"Real glad you found him," she said, stifling a yawn and standing up straighter to crack a few pockets of air out of her spine. "I'll be turning in for the night. It's been nice meeting you."

"Good night, Azrael," he said, and she almost didn't recognize her own name. Having been around her mother exclusively for years—to whom she would always be known as "Azzy"—the sound of her full name from this strange boy was exotic and new.

"Night," she said, shaking herself out of her silent reverie. Then, as she was turning away:

"Um, what are you doing tomorrow morning?"

She paused in mid-step and almost collided with a wall. The familiar question had thrown her mind from its track of sleep. "I… I'm going to stock up on things for the trip through Mount Moon, probably," she said. And then, almost cringingly, "Why?"

"Well, I don't know, I just thought that maybe I could, you know, treat you to breakfast or something," he said, rubbing the back of his blond head with one large hand and pulling it through the top of his scalp down over his face, which was looking rather pale. "I mean, I did kind of smash into you, and you _did_ help me find Ratty." He appeared finished, and looked at her hopefully.

"Um," Azrael said. She wasn't at all sure what the best way to decline would be. Regretting her years of living as a hermit and her utter ineptitude at social skills, she groped wildly in the dark for the right words. "Um, well…" and then, for the second time that night: "Sure, why not."

Light seemed to shine from Orion's good-featured face. "Excellent! I'll meet you out here at about seven thirty, eight?" he asked. Azrael was silently appalled at how late this boy slept in. he seemed to mistake her expression and fumbled across new words. "Well, if that's kind of early we can make it nine, I totally understand, I mean, it's late and you look tired—oh, no, I didn't mean you _look_ tired, just that you _seem_ tired, and I—"

"Seven-thirty is fine," Azrael interjected, becoming quite familiar at interrupting the rambling boy. "Seven-thirty is great."

"Oh… oh, okay." He said. There was an awkward moment of silence.

"Well… good night." Azrael tried, heading for her room again. It took the best of her willpower not to run.

"Good night," he called after her. "And thank you!"

Azrael had never been more grateful to collapse on a well-made bed.

---------

The next morning Azrael was almost reluctant to pull herself out of bed at six, even though she normally woke up two hours earlier. She even allowed herself the rare pleasure of laying in and staring up at the ceiling for a few minutes, procrastinating the inevitable event of her complete return to the land of the living. She was sure that most others were still asleep.

Finally around six-fifteen she stretched and pulled the covers off of her, sitting up to stretch out her neck and roll her left shoulder, which she appeared to have slept on oddly. It was tense and sore. The floor was unpleasantly cold, but Azrael was far too used to the floorboards at home to be perturbed by it.

She probably wouldn't have seen it if the just-rising sun hadn't been hitting the windowsill at just the right angle. But see it she did, and all at once a chunk of ice seemed to flood her, making her feel almost giddy with dread.

There, stuffed carefully between the crack between the two locked windows, gleaming menacingly in the morning light, was yet another shuriken.

Every muscle in her body tensed at the same time, and blindly Azrael groped for her Pokeballs. They were where she had left them on the bedside table. Closing her fist around the one that held Eevee, she moved slowly towards the window. She wished that she had a weapon on her person. Nearing the windowsill, she pressed herself flat against the wall adjacent and suddenly reached forward, looped her finger into the circle in the middle of the throwing star, and pulled.

It came out in one motion, a quick jerk before the windows jerked apart from each other with an unnecessarily loud rattle. No longer held taut by the shuriken, they rattled against one another in the mild breeze outside.

Azrael threw off the bolt and yanked the windows open, fully expecting some kind of attack. When nothing came, she seemed to breathe again. She hopped up on the bed and leaned out, glancing in either direction, and finally up, just to be sure, before she retreated back into her room and closed—and bolted—the windows again.

Disturbed beyond her normal capacity for alarm, Azrael sat on her bed for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. She had always had a large capacity for fear—and yet here she was, holding herself in the chilly morning air, holed up in a room, scared to death by a three-inch hunk of metal.

And yet, no matter how much Azrael tried to belittle her fears, she knew _why_ they were rational. Her father had _not_ been a sane man when he'd left them—at best, he'd been fraying apart at the edges. She was not as scared of the deadly looking blade as she was of what it could _mean_; her father was watching her. And, judging by the haunting clues that seemed to be following her now, he was not looking out for her with fatherly affection.

Azrael was so lost in thought she didn't hear footsteps down the hall until they were passing right by her door. Struck with a sudden impulse, she pulled a pair of jeans on and hastily flung open the door to see who was walking past.

None other than Orion froze dead in his tracks right in front of her open door, almost getting clipped in the jaw by the swinging radius. The two shared an almost comical moment of comprehension.

"Oh," Azrael said. "Oh. Hi. Sorry that I almost hit you." And then, after a moment's consideration, "Why are you up so early?"

Orion seemed to reanimate. "Well, I usually get up around this time or a few hours earlier if I feel like it. I was actually going to check to see what good places there are to eat around here." He smiled at her in a way that made the corners of his blue-green eyes crinkle at the edges. "You care to come along?"

Azrael considered this for a moment, and nodded. "Just give me a moment to change," she said, starting to close the door. "I'll meet you in the lobby."

After she had shut the door on her unlikely companion—if that's even what he _was_—Azrael leaned up against the still-cool wood. She wasn't sure why, but she felt somehow safer in Orion's presence. She supposed it was rooted deep within her human nature to pack together in numbers for safety, but Azrael couldn't help feeling weak for it. She had always valued her independence and ability to take care of her mother—and her little brother, before he'd left. Now she felt slightly foolish for seeking the company of this blonde-haired stranger simply because he was a warm body and she didn't feel like being alone.

Still slightly lost in her thoughts, Azrael pulled on her dark green turtleneck and hiked up her jeans temporarily to slip into her black boots. After pulling her hair back into an expertly woven braid, she locked her room and headed out to the lobby to meet Orion.

He was waiting for her with his back turned to the rest of the room, leaning on the windowsill and peering out through the misty glass. Unbidden, the image of the shuriken jabbed carefully into the space where the wood met flashed through her mind, and she shook her head to rid herself of the visage.

Orion, alerted to her presence, turned around. The light caught on his gold hair and flashed brilliantly, almost hurting her eyes. When the hazy halo cleared away, he was smiling. "Shall we head out?"


	16. Chapter 16 Visora

Chapter 16

Visora and Elva, as different as they were, shared _some_ measure of a sisterly bond, even if it was rather feeble at times. There were certain days that Elva instinctively gave her sister space—a foreign concept with the Mermaid-girl—and days where Visora actually went out of her way to talk to Elva, an equally rare commodity.

This time, they didn't even need words to reach a mutual conclusion: _We're both damned tired, and we're going to sleep right this second. Whatever we have to do can wait until tomorrow._

They checked themselves in to an abysmally decaying Center located an equally abysmal distance from the entrance of the town, an illogical location that irritated Visora's already taut nervous system profoundly. By the time they got there she was snappy and behaved rather haughtily to the bleak-faced man behind the counter. Everything seemed to be on her nerves—even the morose expressions on the townspeople's faces was ticking her off.

Once they reached their rooms, Elva slipped out of her jeans and collapsed face-first into bed. She was asleep in what seemed like seconds, and dismally Visora wished that she herself could sleep so hastily. She felt as though she were caked in layers upon layers of dirt, however, and knew she wouldn't be able to sleep unless she scrubbed at _least_ most of it off.

She unzipped her backpack and, leaving it open on the side counter, removed a few belongings and headed towards the bathroom. It was as equally run down as the rest of the place, lit by a bare bulb with a ball-chain attached and cracked porcelain facilities. The mirror was spotted and dingy, so cloudy that Visora could scarcely see the details in her reflection. She realized that it was covered in a thin sheet of plastic and peeled it back, smiling slightly to herself as the visage became clearer. Why they bothered keeping their mirrors safe and spotless, she had no idea.

She placed her green toothbrush, green comb, green shaving razor, and green bottle of hand soap/face wash on the right side of the sink, making sure not to intrude upon the left side where Elva's things would file in the next day. Since Visora was right handed and her sister was the opposite, this setup had never failed them and was respected by them mutually. The green and blue motif that they adopted a few years ago _also_ worked well, as it lent the bathrooms an air of fresh wintery health. Visora supposed it was rather pathetic how girly they could be at times, but hey—they _were_ girls. If they weren't entitled to indulge in the occasional bout of femininity, _no_ one was.

Visora disrobed and stepped beneath the fray of sleeting cold water, a welcome relief to her burning muscles. She normally used her showers as reflecting time as much as hygiene time, and the topic of tonight's daily ponder was the two people she and Elva had encountered in the forest. The second set of siblings had indeed been intriguing—Visora just wasn't sure if she had liked them or not. On one hand, the boy was indeed, good conversation and pleasant to be around, and the girl was spunky and aggressive, traits that Visora admired in a person—and on the other hand they had been secretive and strange, setting traps and going against the law like the vigilante-wanna-be's that Visora hated so much.

Her father had been like that, a man with too many dreams and too little regard for the government, bent on achieving his ends through any means possible and giving no credit for the "law" and the conventional way things were meant to be run. He would steal gifts for their mother and them, bringing home too-expensive jewels and games and clothes. It wasn't until she was eight or so—and more savvy with the financial situation of their parents—that she began to understand how impossible it was for a man with an income of little over $25,000 a year to afford such things for his daughters and wife. It was impossible—except by illegal means.

Visora had never been a stickler for justice, but she'd never approved of lawbreaking, either. So, when her father had been thrown in the slammer for his outlandish lifestyle, she had been torn between sorrow and loyalty to her blood and a small, triumphant feeling akin to the saying "It serves you right." Feeling like a traitor, she'd not gone to visit him in almost a year, instead contenting herself with the occasional letter correspondence.

She didn't know even half of what Gaveriel and Ciara were mixing themselves up in with Team Rocket. She knew this, and she honestly didn't care to find out the extent of it. It would only serve as yet _another_ thing that would grate on her nerves. Whatever it was that they were planning, she had a feeling that the consequences would be _far_ worse than a few years in the slammer—and she didn't want any part of it. Much less did she want Elva, sweet, naïve Elva, to get tangled up in the complicated web of danger they were weaving.

Stepping out from under the spray of water and toweling her mid-back length red hair dry with a towel while turning the squeaky faucet off with the other, she firmly made up her mind. No, they never _would_ see those two siblings again—and in spite of the friends they could have been, it was better that way.

---------

The next morning Visora was awoken by the sound of the unnecessarily-noisy shower head being turned off. She was normally not a morning person, but this time her eyes snapped open as if she'd been awake all night. She must have slept very lightly, she thought to herself as she got up and out of bed, because she didn't seem to have tossed or turned at all during the night.

Emerging from the bathroom in a haze of steam and water vapor, Elva's smiling face greeted her buoyantly. "Heya Visora!"

"Morning, Elva," Visora murmured under her breath, groping in her bag for a change of clothes. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well, some kind of rapping outside woke me up about halfway through the night, but I was too tired to care and fell back asleep," her sister responded, toweling her scraggly brown hair try and running her fingers through it in an attempt to comb it. "You seen my brush anywhere?"

"If it's not in your bag I'm not sure where it would be," Visora answered offhandedly, pulling out a lime green tank top with a pink heart in the center and a pair of white Capri's. "You can use mine."

"Thanks, sis."

After they had gotten changed, settled into their room, and rounded up their Pokemon, the sisters headed out into the dining area of the Pokemon Center and ordered some food from the take-out counter nearby, along with liberal amounts of Pokechow. They sat together at a corner table near a window, and Visora stared out it placidly while Elva fidgeted, waiting for their food. Visora was struck with sudden déjà vu, and realized that only yesterday morning they'd been doing the exact same thing in Saffron City. They really _had_ made better time taking the damned side path through the mountains than they would have with the more conventional path. It they were following the dirt road off route , they would still be out there and probably wouldn't have reached Lavender until three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.

Gaveriel and Ciara _had_ saved them about a day and a half of camping out in the open.

"You thinking about _Gav_?" Elva teased lightheartedly. Visora rolled her eyes and smacked her sister in her just-drying brown head.

"There are times I wonder if you're psychic, airhead," she said. "I _was_ actually thinking about those two."

Elva's interest seemed to perk up. "Y'know," she said in a blatantly obvious way that Elva probably thought was subtle, "I wouldn't mind at all if we went back and took them up on that offer."

Visora snorted. Elva sure _sounded_ like she was joking most of the time, but the fact remained that Visora could tell when she was serious. And now she knew that if she threw her hands up in the air and said, "Gosh gee golly, sis, why not?" Elva would most certainly _not_ stop her and say "Oh, I was just kidding. I don't really want to go."

That meant that Elva needed to be put in her place—again. Visora sighed heavily, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger. "Elva," she said despairingly, "You have got to be kidding me. You do not even understand the kind of trouble those two will get themselves into in the future. They're messing with the law—their messing with a huge organization of criminals. Right now, they _have_ no allies. They're showing the police up as incompetent and pissing off the biggest gang of Pokemon thefts in the world. I don't want us to have anything to _do_ with the likes of them."

Normally this was enough to dissuade Elva from continuing any argument she had against her sister. Elva normally didn't fight hard for things, since she was never really seized with the dire need for anything, but this time wasn't like the others.

The blue-eyed girl's face went melancholy, and with amazing perception, in barely more than a whisper, she murmured, "Not _everyone_ ends up like Dad, you know."

Visora's mouth had dropped open, and she was about ready to argue vehemently or exclaim in shock when their food order was announced. Shooting Elva a salty glare, Visora strode off to pick it up, and by the time she got back Elva had let out all of her Pokemon to chow down, and the subject was dropped.

---------

That afternoon Elva and she headed out the backdoor of the Pokemon Center and up the daunting path to Lavender Town's haunted Pokemon tower. They passed by a number of stands selling superfluous Pokemon merchandise and paraphernalia, some of which Elva seemed actually interested in. Visora had to keep walking with her eyes set, undaunting, on their goal before them to stop Elva from loitering.

As they walked, a young boy, maybe ten by the looks of it, with odd silvery-grey and black hair shuffled by them, looking dazed and disturbed. From the looks of it, he had a busted lip. Odd, Visora thought. There didn't look like there was anyone to fight around here, unless he'd gotten the short end of the stick in a scuffle with a ghost. She shorted at the thought, and the boy looked up at them. He smiled wanly.

"Be careful about the psycho psychics," he said. "They're really bizarre."

"We will, thanks," Visora said, nodding in acknowledgment to him as they passed each other by. "Take care of that lip of yours."

"I will," was all he said as he continued on his way.

Visora held the door for Elva as the two of them entered the deserted lobby of the Pokemon Tower. The second she stepped into the threshold, the sparse hairs on the back of her neck shot up to stand on end. She didn't like the vibe she was getting from this place at _all._

Elva seemed affected by it too, which was saying a lot, as the girl could barely sense hostility even when it was directed straight at her, even though that seldom happened. To see her sister with a case of the heebie-jeebies just as bad as her own bothered Visora profoundly.

"Vi, are you sure we're allowed to be in here?" Elva said, and Visora caught a distinct shudder roll off her sister's slim shoulders out of the corner of her eye. "It looks like there's no one here for a reason."

"Well, they didn't put a sign up in front saying "No Trespassing," now, did they? I think we'll be fine." She had added the last part in there as an undertone to say that they would be safe from physical harm rather than rule-breaking consequences, and she could tell that Elva caught it by the way her frame relaxed a hair's width. "Let's check out those stairs, then, shall we?"

The two girls made their way up the flight of cobweb-strewn stairs, and offhandedly Visora tried to remember the difference between cobwebs and spider webs to keep her mind off of the growing bubble of apprehension lodged firmly in her gut and growing every second. Her proclamation of confidence seemed to have done Elva some good—the blue-eyed girl was now glancing around the stairwell in keen interest at a series of deep fissures that branched off into smaller cracks, looking like the handiwork of some very, very large object striking the wall numerous times—but Visora couldn't muster up any of that sense of security for herself. Perhaps it was because she knew that if something bad _was_ waiting up there for them, it would be all her fault for leading them headfirst into it.

_Oh, come on, girl,_ Visora berated herself sharply, frowning in distaste at this sudden turn to paranoia she had made in the last few moments. _Nothing is waiting up there for you but Pokemon to battle._

Prompted on by the thought of actual battle experience, Visora picked up her pace a notch and stepped delicately through the threshold to the next floor.

From somewhere behind her, Visora heard Elva clap a hand down over her mouth to stifle a gasp of shock and horror. She felt like she had to beat down her natural reaction to shock—which was aggravation—with a stick. Her initial reaction had been to wheel around and start snapping at her sister, "What did you expect? We're in a freaking' Cemetary!" but the truth was that Visora was stunned into silence as well.

Tombstones lined the floor from the very front to the very back, with the larger plots in the back and the smaller ones in the front. There had to be over 500 in this room alone.

And the sickening thing was that Visora could tell that many of these Pokemon had not died of old age.

She glanced down at the writing on the slab closest to her right foot and saw—with a jolt of disgust—that this victim had been a Clefairy less than a year old. Beneath the date of birth and death was inscribed, "Taken from us by Team Rocket. May Clefairy's soul rest in peace."

Visora looked at the one after it and felt herself sinking into a dream. "Taken from us by Team Rocket." The next one: "Taken from us…" and the next, and the next, and the next.

The entire room was dedicated to Pokemon that had been killed by the Rockets. There was no discrimination or mercy for the young or old—the Rockets appeared to kill anything that got in their way. Visora thought wildly that if she tried, she could find all 150 Pokemon listed here, their names engraved in stone.

Elva appeared to be crying beside her. Visora was too numb with shock to do so herself, but deep within her chest she felt a fluttering wing of sorrow beating to get out somehow. She had never been good with expressing her emotions, however, and the wing curled and withered and burst into a flame of burning hot anger.

"I can't believe this," she began, softly at first, and then louder, because she couldn't stand the silence that was only broken every so often by her sister's soft whimpers. "I don't believe this! All of these Pokemon were killed? _All of them?_"

"Vi, don't yell," Elva whispered beside her. "Respect them."

Visora, with effort, clamped down on her aggression. It went without saying that neither sister really felt like going on, but now Visora's morbid curiosity had taken hold, and she wanted to know exactly _how_ extensive the damage was. Starting off across the floor, she thought at first when she didn't hear footsteps following her that Elva was going to turn around and leave—and then, right as rain, there they were, and Elva was at her side again, jogging slightly to keep up.

The girls went up seven flights of the tower in this manner, stopping to read the tombstones along the way. The first six floors were dedicated to the Pokemon that had been lost in Rocket raids. Over 3,000 Pokemon, and that was only the ones that they knew about, or the ones whose trainers had wanted them buried here. The number was actually doubled, Visora figured, or even tripled. She was certain that the Rockets had no qualms about massacring wild Pokemon, perhaps mothers protecting their young, or those that refused to leave their homes when the Rockets decided to move in. Those that couldn't be sold for cash had no use to them.

Visora had never noticed it before, but no one really spoke of Team Rocket anymore. She had been born about ten years after the criminal gang had been disbanded, and by that time no one was talking about it anymore. All she had been told was that they were Pokemon gangsters who sold rare creatures for money and made a habit of taking over buildings and running high-risk operations underground. She hadn't really cared to know more, but suddenly she was positively _burning up_ with the might of the curiosity in her. She wanted to know _everything_ about Team Rocket's inner workings, the things they had done in the past, the things they were doing even _now_—

And with a sinking sensation in her stomach, realized that Gaveriel and Ciara were probably the only ones who could tell her just that.

Visora wasn't sure why she couldn't bring herself to don her normal reaction to things like this: "Well, what's done is done; there's nothing _I_ can do about it, so why worry?" She supposed it was the sheer magnitude of the crime that had stunned her into feeling a remorse so deep that it rattled her very marrow. She felt that she _should have_ been able to do something… even though she knew, logically, that these events had been over long before she was even born. Still, it was distressing, to say the least.

All at once, Elva screamed behind her. Whirling around, Visora expected to see some kind of attacker—a man in a black mask, or something similar. The visage that met her eyes was little short of a nightmare, however. This was certainly no burglar, or even any mere _mortal._

Closing in on her sister, floating down from above, from _nowhere_ was a shady figure shrouded in the thickest mist Visora had ever seen. Cold filled her lungs as the mist curled around the side of her face, blocking her vision. Compulsively, she coughed, and when she found that she couldn't stop to take in more air, felt the knot of apprehension within her spring alive and untangle itself into thousands of writhing coils of panic. _I'm going to pass out,_ Visora thought to herself in detached wonder, a second before a second piercing scream shook her back to reality. Her sister needed her.

"Bellsprout," Visora just managed to wheeze out. The sudden change in temperature was wreaking absolute _havoc_ on her throat and diaphragm—she could scarcely to two seconds without another coughing fit.

The red light was a welcome comfort, almost as much as the shaky outline of her Pokemon forming before her. She was about to utter a command to the gold and green creature when footsteps up the stairs alerted her attention to the door. Elva appeared to have heard it too, for she stopped trying to back away and froze in place. Even the ghost appeared to be listening, for Visora had decided there was no way this creature could _not_ be a ghost.

That was when something cold brushed up against the side of her face, and, almost involuntarily, she turned to look behind her. There were at least fifty other spirits swooping slowly in upon them.

Her last truly distinct thought before instinctual self-preservation took over her mind was, _I really hope we survive this._


	17. Chapter 17 Blake

Chapter 17

Blake had been given an ice pack for his face and a band-aid with little Pidgeys all over it; something quite typical for Lavender Town's facilities, he supposed. He vaguely hoped it wasn't infected as he gathered up his things to head out. Originally he had planned on staying in Lavender for a while in order to train his Spearow a few levels up—it was only four off from evolution—but after that afternoon's psychic encounter, he figured that trekking back to Saffron wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Besides, there were other things on his mind besides training his Flying-type Pokemon—the only reason that his father had allowed him to leave Azalea town in Jhoto to come here—such as his sister. Blake had been separated from her for far too long, and had made it a personal goal of his to reconnect with her before the year was out. It was late June now, almost July, and Blake figured that if he slowly but surely made his way to the Viridian forest he would be all set.

Blake was just considering whether to go south to Fuchsia City or west to Saffron when a boy about half a foot taller than him caught his eye. At first, all Blake had really noticed was the hair—it was a strange, almost white blonde, that, when it caught the light off the sun, was silvery-grey. Actually, Blake thought, frowning, it almost didn't look blonde at all. The other reason this particular stranger had grabbed his attention was the enormous Fearow beside him.

The creature was magnificent. Its wingspan was at least twice as long as an average Fearow's could hope to grow in its entire life, and yet this particular Pokemon looked only about three years old.

Blake, being the bird trainer he was, was mesmerized. He supposed the Fearow's trainer saw him staring, because a few seconds later he was aware of two coal-black eyes fixed on him, eyes that took in light and gave none of it back.

Embarrassed, Blake looked down and to the left, continuing on his way. Unfortunately the boy with the Fearow was dead in front of him, right where he was heading, so there was no real way to pretend he hadn't been staring. He had almost passed the pair, when:

"You like my Fearow?"

Blake stopped walking, bit his lip—which reopened his wound—and turned around. "Oh. Yeah, it's really… big."

Astounded at how utterly _lame_ that sounded, Blake waited for the stranger to laugh or challenge him to a battle, which, Blake knew from experience, was pretty much the _only_ reason people talked to each other around here. He'd been walking here along Route when a girl had stopped him, commented about how she liked his shoes, and abruptly challenged him to a battle. Bewildered, Blake had agreed to it, since it was considered poor etiquette to turn down a battle invitation, but he couldn't help wondering if it was possible for two people to have a _normal_ conversation in Kanto. Around Azalea town everyone had known he was Falkner's son—and had therefore steered clear of him. Blake supposed that it was better than getting picked on, but it _did_ tend to get lonely.

Meanwhile, the silver-haired boy had started talking again. Blake forced himself out of the back corner of his mind and out into reality again, focusing on the person in front of him. His lack of social skills made conversing extremely difficult, but he was determined to get it down.

"You're a bird trainer, I take it."

"Um… yeah, I am. Pardon my asking, but how'd you tell?"

"No one else would really care about the average size of a Fearow."

Blake felt as if he'd fallen into the Twilight Zone. Did people _really_ talk to each other like this? It was as if they'd fallen into some badly written fanfiction, or something. The boy was regarding him evenly with a smile that didn't reach his eyes at _all._ Blake shuddered.

"Well, you're right about that. It really is amazing—what level is it?"

"Fifty-five," the boy said offhandedly, looking slightly disgusted. "But with all the training I've put the thing through it _should_ be around sixty by now…" he shot it an annoyed glance. "It's a slow learner."

Blake's jaw had dropped open. A level _fifty-five Pokemon?_ Blake wasn't sure he'd ever seen one over _thirty_-five. It was particularly amazing, especially since the levels became harder and harder to attain the higher they became. Needless to say, level 100 Pokemon were pretty much a joke—hardly anyone spent that much time training.

"So, what's in your arsenal?" The boy asked Blake, seeming genuinely interested.

"Um…" feeling his face flush, Blake muttered, "Spearow, Pidgey, Natu, and Murkrow, but they're all pretty low-level."

"Well, variety is better than brute strength, no?"

"I suppose so… I'm Blake." He stammered out impulsively, feeling somewhat awkward that neither of them had introduced themselves properly before then. He wasn't sure that he was going to be hanging around for much longer, but the ever-constant nagging of courtesy and etiquette that nagged at the back of his head wouldn't shut up. "What's your name?"

"Zaden," was all the boy said. He turned back to his Fearow and tightened some black leather straps that appeared to be a saddle onto its back. Shifting them back and forth for any sign of slack, he tightened them again.

"Unusual name," Blake commented offhandedly, almost not expecting Zaden to answer. When the boy did, he was slightly confused.

"My father is an unusual man."

Awkward silence. Blake decided to file away into his memory banks that introducing yourself to a near stranger wasn't a smart thing to do when Zaden continued.

"Actually, I'm on my way back to see him, but before I go I have to find a girl that's supposed to be around the Viridian. One of his old students."

Zaden turned back to face him, and Blake noticed something odd. Clipped to the boy's belt were three very lethal looking shuriken. The sight of them made Blake feel slightly uncomfortable, but he was thankfully able to avert his gaze before the other noticed. "Oh… so your father is a Pokemon Trainer too?"

A sound that was almost laughter escaped from Zaden's throat. "Yeah, I guess you could say that," He looked anxious all of the sudden and adopted a strictly-business attitude, straightening his spine out and half-lidding his eyes. "Have you seen a girl with long black hair about to here," he motioned with his hand to his waist, "and grey eyes? Her name is Azrael."

For a moment, Blake was too stunned to speak. "Um—" And then he coughed hard into his hand to hide the answer that had been on the tip of his tongue, changing it abruptly to, "No, can't say that I have. Sorry."

Zaden knew. Blake felt his heart leap up into his throat inexplicably. He really had no idea why he was so afraid of this stranger with the silver hair—he could hardly expect him to stab him through with one of those nicely-sharpened metal blades, right? Not here in the middle of the pathway to Route .

In the back of his mind, Blake tried to remember what time it was.

"Not a problem, I wasn't really expecting much. She's not social." He turned back to Fearow and mounted the Pokemon, pulling its black reigns tightly and extracting a cry from the creature as it spread its remarkable wingspan. Blake was temporarily struck dumb by the sheer magnificence of it again.

"Well, I'd better be going. Nice meeting you, Blake."

And then Zaden smiled in a way that was not at _all_ friendly, a way that almost made Blake think of one of those cold-blooded psychopathic murders from cheesy black-and-white films or radio programs from the turn of the last century.

"Yeah, I—you, too."

Zaden was already taking off at the last sentence, and Blake wasn't at all sure he heard it. It didn't really matter, he supposed, as he watched the beautiful red-and-gold bird soar off into the magenta-shot sky—he didn't plan on meeting up with _that_ boy ever again.

_When I find Azrael, though,_ Blake thought to himself, pulling his jacket around his shoulders a little tighter against a sudden cold breeze, _I'll have to ask him how she knows this guy's father._

From nowhere, a deep sense of foreboding gripped Blake and sent him running down the pathway to the outskirts of the forest, filled suddenly with a chill that wasn't generated from the cold air outside.


	18. Chapter 18 Gaveriel

Chapter 18

"The _Pokemon Tower?_" Gaveriel asked Ciara, skeptical. "And to think, you said to me just last month, 'I am _never_ setting foot in that building, Gav,'" he craned his neck to catch Ciara's eye. She was looking down and away and doing a very bad job of covering up guilt. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Well, y'know, it's good experience, and we haven't been able to train our Pokemon for while, y'know, and I figured that the ghosts are just _Pokemon_, y'know, not like, _real_ ghosts, y'know—"

"If you say 'y'know' one more time, Ci, I swear," Gaveriel shook his head and laughed. "I have no qualms about it. If you _really_ want to go, I'll go with you. It just seems a bit out-of-character for you, that's all." He smiled warmly and put an arm around her slim shoulders. She grinned up and seemed a bit too relieved at his sudden lack of suspicion.

Inside, though, Gaveriel had already picked apart his sister's intentions and was doing his very best to keep a straight face. She really was _terribly_ obvious when she wanted something—manipulation just wasn't Ciara's forte. Gaveriel admired that in his sister—it was one of the things that made them so different. Being the eldest, Gaveriel was used to lying, cheating, and swindling his way through life in order to keep them safe, something that he fell into all too willingly. Ciara, however, couldn't lie her way out of a wet paper bag. She tried, occasionally, when she truly wanted something bad—which was now—but there hadn't been a single time that Gaveriel had failed to see right through his sister.

Now, she wanted to check out Lavender Town top to bottom, starting with the Pokemon Tower, since that was the hardest point for her, personally—Ciara had harbored an intense fear for ghosts since she was a baby—in search of the two girls. Gaveriel wasn't sure why he didn't completely shut down his sister's search party, as there was no doubt in his mind what she was up to. Following around two girls they barely knew like a pair of stalkers wasn't high on his list of things to do.

But maybe it was because Ciara so rarely got what she wanted, and so rarely wanted anything at _all_ that Gaveriel was letting her get away with it this one time. He didn't even know _why_ she wanted to see these girls so badly—she seemed to have truly disliked them for a stretch—and Gaveriel knew that the only reason why _he_ didn't know why she liked them was because Ciara _herself_ didn't quite know the answer, either.

It was yet another thing that separated the siblings. Gaveriel was quite an introspect, and always knew precisely why he did everything. Ciara could act out an entire day's worth of influential events and not even know her motivation—or truly _care_ to know. She went with her gut instinct, or "female intuition" as she referred to it haughtily whenever Gaveriel called her impulsive.

Now he and Ciara were making their way to the Pokemon Tower. Gaveriel had to politely decline a number of people who were trying to sell them distractingly morbid souvenirs. Ciara seemed interested in a set of bloody, eight-inch knives, but Gaveriel lead her away before the woman who was selling them could catch the glimmer of interest and attack.

"You realize the blood is probably tomato paste," Gaveriel asked her, eyeing his sister from the corner of his eye as the woman yelled "Come again!" from behind them.

"But the point is, bro, that they _look_ cool."

By the time they reached the ominous looking double doors of the Pokemon cemetery, though, Ciara's uppity spunk had entirely died out. Her face looked white, and Gaveriel knew that if she hadn't inherited so much of their mother's stubborn pride, she would have asked him if they could turn back. As it were, she took a deep breath and said, "Awesome. Spooky, but awesome," pushing the door open with one slightly trembling hand.

The entire lobby was abandoned. Gaveriel got a slight twinge of precognitive uneasiness before he shut that part of his doubts out. He himself didn't believe in ghosts that weren't of the Pokemon variety, and wasn't about to start. Beside him, waves of intense wariness and wire-tight tension were rolling off Ciara. She seemed hyped up on three tons of caffeine and sugar, ready to snap and attack at the slightest provocation. Gaveriel made sure his voice was soothing, soft, and non-threatening when he asked, "You want to explore around here a bit before we go to the upper levels?"

He was allowing her a chance to collect her nerves and prove to herself that there were no ghosts in here, but Ciara caught the sign of mercy and rebelled against it ferociously. "I'm not _scared,_ if that's what you think," she said indignantly, straightening her back out and brushing her long hair back over one shoulder. "We can go up the stairs any time. In fact, let's do so now. It's boring down here."

Mentally, Gaveriel slapped his forehead. He should have known that Ciara would _never_ admit a sign of weakness. Resigning himself to follow the auburn-haired girl up the next flight of stairs, he probably wouldn't have caught the scream if he hadn't been paying so much attention, and if Ciara hadn't ceased in here fevered footsteps for a mere second's worth of hesitation at the bottom of the flight. The shriek was so soft and faint that Gaveriel was surprised he had heard it at _all._

"Ci!" he hissed, freezing in his tracks and concentrating all of his might on locating the direction the shout had come from. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Ciara asked, alarmed for two seconds before melting into fierce anger. "That's _not funny, Gav!_"

"No, I'm serious!" he said, but lifted a hand to silence the girl again. He couldn't tell if the sound had come from outside or—upstairs. Knowing their luck, it was the latter.

"Gav, will you just cut it out, I'm not—"

"Shhh!" He insisted, moving to stand beside her and craning his neck into the poorly-lit stairwell.

"—not scared, so you may as well just give it up—"

"I said _be quiet, Ciara!"_ Gaveriel hissed, and then the scream sounded again, much louder this time, but still barely audible. Ciara caught it, though, and her almost-red eyes widened comically to about twice their normal size.

"Holy crap!" she choked out in barely a whisper. "Someone's up there!"

"Let's go," Gaveriel was saying as Ciara and he were already bounding up the stairs. No matter how afraid she was, Ciara would put all her personal worries aside for a chance to fight and help someone in distress. Justice was, after all, the core of their very lives, and often times the only thing that kept the siblings going on, besides each other.

It took them maybe five minutes to dash madly up every set of stairs and sprint through every floor to the next one. The Pokemon Tower's architect must have been a three-year-old, or someone with a sick sense of humor—instead of the traditional one flight of stairs on one side of the building, the layout of the tower had alternating sets of stairs on opposite sides of the tower. Gaveriel and Ciara had to dash up about fifty steps and run across a floor to the opposing side of the building to dash up another fifty and run back to the side they had started on. It was a pain in the ass, to say the least, and by the time they reached the sixth flight Gaveriel was sorely wishing they'd install an elevator.

He was panting pretty hard, which was why he went down on all fours when suddenly he wasn't sucking in _air_ to his starved lungs, but thick, choking mist and fog. Ciara seemed to stumble and pause as well, but was more able to cope with the sudden change in atmosphere than her brother. Gaveriel was bothered by a mild case of asthma, but he'd only had one major attack in his life, and wasn't normally hindered in physical activities. Right now, though, his lungs felt as if they were being constricted by the world's strongest Tangela.

Ciara stopped moving forward and staggered back, coughing, to help Gaveriel to his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a deep, shaky breath before giving Ciara the thumbs up sign. The two of them half-jogged half-stumbled into the open room on the sixth floor where the mist abruptly thickened. Gaveriel passed right through something that felt solid for a second and completely gaseous the next. He was suddenly covered in something that felt liquid but evaporated into icy-cold air the second he wiped at his face in alarm—something that felt sort of like dry ice, and then chilled gelatin, and then something in between. Ectoplasm, was the first thing that leapt to his mind, and for once his logical side shut up and didn't deny the possibility.

He didn't see Visora laying on the ground and almost tripped over her. She cried out and elbowed him sharply in the knee, causing it to buckle and him to collapse in a heap beside her. She kicked ferociously out at him and he could barely cough out, "Cool it, I'm human!"

After a second's more flailing and struggling she paused—then latched onto his arm and shouted (or wheezed, since she seemed to be in a similar condition of suffocation) "Is that you?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's me—" his sentence was cut off, and suddenly he called out, "Ciara! Where are you?"

"O-over here," came the clearest voice of the three of them somewhere to his right. "Wh-what are these th-things?" She seemed scared out of her mind, but Gaveriel could already feel her reaching for her pokeballs at her waist. He felt a surge of pride in his sister's ability to keep a level head.

Visora's grip on his arm tightened to an almost painful degree as she gasped out, "Elva! She's over there," she paused to cough and compulsively Gaveriel linked an arm under her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. She leaned on him for support, a gesture Gaveriel knew was purely out of necessity. Sure enough, she straightened herself out within seconds and was darting out blind into the mist. Ciara and Gaveriel shot after her after exchanging a glance.

"Cubone," Gaveriel muttered, tapping the button on the Pokeball clutched in his hand at the same instant Ciara said, "Vulpix."

The dual beams of digitized crimson materialized into two Pokemon that instinctively followed at their trainer's heels. Gaveriel marveled at how easily Visora had vanished into the mist—she'd barely taken three steps away from them when they could no longer see her.

"Stay by me, Ci," Gaveriel said, finding that taking many rapid, shallow breaths was more effective than trying to fill his lungs entirely. "I don't want you getting too far ahead."

"Right," she said, coughing slightly and pawing through the dense fog ahead of them. For a brief second the air parted in the wake of her hand and a blessedly clear patch appeared before them—Gaveriel caught sight of Visora's red hair about ten feet ahead—before the fog coiled back into place.

"Vulpix, ember!" Ciara shouted suddenly, and a whirl of flames exploded inches from Gaveriel's left ear. Flinching away and almost falling, he marveled at his sister's problem solving skills as an enormous patch of clear air whirled open ahead of them.

"Excellent!" Gaveriel called, starting forward. "I think the mist ends a little ways ahead."

The two of them took advantage of the open spaces and flew forward. Wondering exactly _where_ Visora had disappeared to and if Elva was okay, Gaveriel found that he was right—he lurched forward and out of the thick fog suddenly. Taking a second to reorient himself, he realized that the fog had been creating a hurricane-esque vortex all around them, and that they were now in the "eye" of the storm.

Surrounding them on all sides was thick, churning bog. There was about a fifteen-foot radius of clear, open air where they were standing now, however—and roughly fifty shadowy figures closing in on Visora and Elva, who were huddled together in the middle, accompanied by a Bellsprout and Poliwag.

The figures defied description. They _looked_ almost human, but at the same time Gaveriel knew they couldn't possibly be. There were times they seemed transparent, and when he blinked they would be solid matter. The form shifted in a way that made him think that the things were just balls of gas taking on different shapes—and then he would reconsider and wonder if they were truly of the flesh and blood. He analyzed all of this in under a second.

"Cubone! Bone Club!" Gaveriel shouted impulsively, throwing his hand out and pointing at one that was reaching a dark hand out at Elva. Obediently the small orange Pokemon leapt in front of him and wound up its swing like a pitcher and batter all at once, performing a full circle of wind-up before releasing its foot-long bone and sending it sailing through the air.

Gaveriel fully expected the thing to fly right through the figure. Naturally, his surprise was complete when it hit target with a solid _whock!_ The figure seemed to explode into a spray of mist, and in its place was the _least_ human-like thing Gaveriel had ever seen; a floating black ball with impossibly large, milk-white eyes and alabaster fangs.

Of course, he thought to himself, feeling foolish. A Gastly. Why didn't I realize it before?

Everyone seemed shocked, even the remaining figures. There was a moment of almost comical silence—and then the Gastly and its remaining comrades attacked.

"Pokemon attacks can hit them!" Gaveriel shouted unnecessarily, as Visora was shouting "Vine Whip!" the same instant Elva and Ciara barked out orders as well.

"Water Gun!"

"Ember!"

The fray was intense. Dark waves of energy flooded the room and made Gaveriel feel weak. Cubone took a nasty blow and seemed down for the count, but Gaveriel crouched beside it and fed it a bottle of potion from his pack and it was up and at it again. Ember and Water Gun seemed particularly effective. They were doing well, but Gaveriel suddenly realized as twenty _more_ Gastlies in the form of the black, humanoid shadows flooded in from the corners of the building that they wouldn't last much longer.

"Everyone!" he shouted, struggling to back towards the thick mist again. "Get ready for one last attack, all together, your strongest move! We have to distract them—and we have to get out of here!"

The girls gave some form of "right," for a response and followed his lead, backing up against the wall of fog.

"Ready?" he asked, and felt his lungs constricting again. He coughed, and was relieved when Ciara started the count down for him.

"One," she said, clenching her small hands into fists.

"Two," Elva near-whispered beside her, biting her lip and standing on her toes.

"Three!" Visora finished, green eyes blazing, red hair flying out behind her as she yelled, "Vine Whip!" fire, water, plant and bone flying forward.

They didn't stop to see if any of their attacks hit target. The second they were done, in near-perfect unison, the four of them lifted their pokeballs and called their respective Pokemon back, turned on their heels, and ran for their lives. Gaveriel could hear the ghosts pursuing them, but didn't chance a look back. Subconsciously he was keeping track of how many sets of footfalls he heard, and was pleased when all four sets reached the stairwell and began bolting down. Halfway down the tower his lungs eased up again and he realized that the Gastlies weren't following them anymore.

They exploded out through the double-doors in the lobby and out into the cool air outside.


	19. Chapter 19 Orion

Chapter 19

The morning wasn't exactly going well.

So far, Orion had spilled coffee all over himself, tripped Azrael—twice—and completely botched up about four different questions or comments, warping even the most innocent sentence into something that sounded terribly offensive. Orion would never understand the notorious bad luck he had around girls. He wasn't interested in dating, but it was a serious hindrance when you couldn't get along with roughly half of the population of the world.

Miraculously, Azrael hadn't slapped him across the face yet. She'd looked witheringly away from the table in something akin to embarrassment a few times when he stumbled over his sentences to the waiter—who had leaned over to Azrael and asked in a subtle whisper if her friend was "special"—but other than that she just seemed very distracted.

Orion really didn't think it was his place to ask, but he'd never been good about knowing his place, so he blundered on, "Is something bothering you? You haven't eaten much."

The blunt statement came out sounding like a mother's ragging, but Azrael merely smiled a small, half-hearted smile at him and said, "No, I'm okay. I just found something strange in my room this morning."

The second it was out of her mouth Azrael looked like she wanted nothing more than to take it back. Her jaw tightened and her half-lidded eyes widened slightly—only a hair's width, barely noticeable—but she hid it well. She immediately set herself upon her food, and Orion contemplated whether he should ask or let it drop. The decision was taken off his shoulders when the waiter returned with the check.

About half an hour later the two of them headed back to the Pokemon Center, Orion feeling pleasantly full on bacon, eggs and toast, and Azrael looking strange and contemplative again. Orion couldn't quite place it—he felt like he _knew_ this girl, like they'd met somewhere before. He was sure she hadn't been there three years ago when he'd gotten his first Pokemon at Cerulean City—his memory had always been remarkably good about small details, and even to this day he could remember every face that came out of those doors.

Still. She was hauntingly familiar, which was probably why he was being so persistent about becoming her friend. He was certain she was fed up with him by now—she didn't exactly seem the social type.

Out of the blue, Orion asked her, "So, you're a Pokemon trainer, right?"

Azrael cocked her head to the side and said slowly, "Yeah… I am. Mostly Dark and Ghost types, but I'm not opposed to some flying and psychic types as well. Do you have a preferred type?"

Orion grinned and nodded. "I'm a Normal type trainer all the way—you really don't see many people doing that."

Azrael nodded. "Quite unique."

There was a strangely comfortable pause. And then, a thought occurred to Orion. "You interested in a quick spar? It's been a long while since I've battled anyone. We could just do a quick one-on-one thing if you want…"

Azrael looked surprised. "Well…" she checked the clock adjacent to the wall she was leaning against and shrugged. "I suppose so. I've got time."

Orion smiled. "Glad to see I've been penciled into your schedule." He hadn't meant it in a sarcastic way, and was relieved when Azrael smiled in turn.

"I suppose I can spare a few minutes for you, huh?"

Moments later they were across from each other out back behind the Center, standing at the ready. Orion had been ready to let her go first when Azrael had lifted her hand rock-paper-scissors style, giving him a look that keenly said that she didn't want an advantage just because she was a girl. Giving in, they'd done battle of the hands, to which she won, anyway.

The first Pokemon she sent out was a small brown pup—an Eevee, Orion knew immediately, and felt a surge of keen interest. He sent out Lickitung, which was his best Pokemon. Instinctively the two had known that the battle wouldn't be easy and had selected their strongest Pokemon to fight with.

Azrael had started with Sand Attack, and Orion was already judging her fighting technique as Lickitung pawed at its face with one of its hands. She had strategy in mind far more than brute attacks, he saw. Most trainers would blindly have Eevee use Tackle right off the bat to see how effective it would be against Lickitung—Azrael hadn't taken that chance.

Orion ordered Lickitung to use Supersonic, and was relieved as it was able to see clearly enough to aim the high-density concussion waves at the right target. As Eevee became confused and ended up slamming itself into the ground instead of at Lickitung on its next turn—Azrael had finally given the Tackle command—Lickitung completely missed its target for Stomp. Overall, they were evenly matched.

In the end Eevee beat Lickitung by maybe five hit points. Orion was amazed at the way Azrael handled her Pokemon—instead of shouting "Tackle!" or "Sand Attack!" at the top of her lungs the way Orion had to do more often than not, she muttered the attack name and gave hand signals that actually seemed more effective than the spoken commands. Orion was indeed impressed.

After he dropped Lickitung off at the Pokemon Center, Orion led Azrael back to her room—a gesture that seemed to confuse her—and they stood awkwardly outside her door for a few moments. Finally, Orion unstuck his throat, and, curling his fingers into his pale blonde hair and pulling on a few strands, a habit he reverted to when he was nervous, asked her, "So… you're going to Mount Moon after this?"

Azrael was staring at her closed door as if she were worried it would bite her, regarding it like it was capable of hideous things. Vaguely, Orion wondered why she was worried about her room. "I… yeah, yes, I am. I was thinking of leaving as soon as tomorrow morning."

Orion winced. To him, the unspoken message was _very_ clear: _I am out of here; don't try to follow me. _Apparently the Pokemon battle hadn't meant they were friends yet.

As she pulled open the door, she was saying "Thank you for—" the meal, probably, but she never got to finish, because as the door swung open a three-inch plate of something shiny fell out from between the door and the threshold, landing with a clatter at their feet.

Orion studied it for maybe a second before Azrael's bizarre reaction to it startled him into looking up at her, instead. He'd seen one of those before, on T.V.: a ninja throwing star. He couldn't remember the Japanese name for it. At the moment, the Japanese name of _anything_ seemed pretty trivial, as Azrael's face had gone sheet-white and her hands had flown up to cover her mouth. It was a terribly feminine and vulnerable position, something that Orion was sure she hadn't meant to do.

Indeed, a nanosecond later she righted herself and swooped down on the throwing star, picking it up with the hem of her turtleneck's sleeves.

"Ah—why was that in your door?" Orion asked, puzzling over the strange thing. He was certain she hadn't put it there by her reaction from it, and inexplicably the appearance of it was disturbing him almost as much as it was she—probably from her air of utmost dread that even now she was attempting to cover with a false air of confidence. He saw the cold emotion in her eyes though—she was afraid.

Gripped with a sudden protective instinct, Orion regarded her evenly, catching and holding her gaze in the most penetrating and forceful way he knew how—which was probably about as effective as puppy-eyes, he knew. "Is someone following you?"

"It's—"

Nothing, Orion could hear on the tip of her tongue. She didn't say 'nothing', however. Instead, out poured the strangest story Orion had heard in a good, long while.

"It's my father. He used these things all the time in his training, but he left me and my mother years ago, and we haven't heard anything from him, and he wasn't well when he left and it's probably _not good_ that these things have been showing up everywhere I go, it's obvious he's not looking to reconnect and talk about the years gone by—" she cut herself off in mid-run on sentence and stared blankly at a wall. "Never mind. I'm sorry for rambling."

She was trying to flee, but Orion wouldn't let her now that he knew the extent of what was really wrong. "Wait," he said, and when she tried to push past him into the room he barricaded the way with his body. His shoulders were broad and he was a good half a foot taller than her, so she soon saw it was no good and looked up at him in a way that made it feel as if she were looking _down_ at him. She was indeed, quite intimidating, but Orion wouldn't be shaken. "Wait, Azrael. You can't go to Mount Moon alone if your father's leaving you death tools with no kind of note or contact! That's insane."

Azrael finally seemed to work up the conviction to tell him the thing she'd probably been meaning to say all day. "Why are _you_ so concerned, anyway? You hardly know me, and I hardly know you. Just—" leave me alone, Orion finished for her in his mind, but for the third time that day Azrael's sentence was cut off before the logical conclusion could be reached. "Just… look. Thank you for being so kind to me, and for your concern. But this isn't something I need help with. It's just… weird, that's all."

"You certainly win the award for the Understatement of the Year," Orion said, breaking into a weary smile. "That even gives the time I said 'I'm a bit clumsy' a run for its money."

He seemed to have hit a chord in Azrael. Something that sounded _almost_ like a repressed chuckle sounded in the back of her throat, and she lowered her face so her bangs fell down over her nose and mouth for a moment. She recovered quickly, though, and smiled at him in a grateful but exasperated way.

"I do appreciate it. You're a very—a very _nice_ guy, which I appreciate." She paused. "And now I'm being redundant. I'm going to start packing now, and I'll need to get into my room unless I plan on leaving all of my things—and my Pokemon—here."

Orion was just about to step aside and concede defeat when he stopped. That seemed to be typical for him to do—step aside and concede defeat. He supposed he was used to it from Surge—but this time he wasn't about to let this girl go out into a dark cave riddled with thousands of dark corners for psycho fathers to hide in all on her own.

"I'm coming with you, then."

"_What?_" Azrael didn't seem to find him amusing anymore. She regained her control but lifted a finger to him warningly. "You may think you're doing me a favor, Orion, but you're not. I'll repeat myself _yet again_; I appreciate your concern. But I can't afford to be held up right now. I've only got two months to do all I need to do before my mother expects me back home. I'm not going to travel with anyone."

"I promise you I won't hold you up," Orion said, closing his eyes and getting ready to shove his dignity aside. "Please? Look, I won't sleep right knowing that you're out there friendless." He winced. He'd successfully made it sound like she had no acquaintances. Marveling at his own conversational incompetence, he stumbled on. "Just let me go with you through Mount Moon. That won't be _so_ bad, will it?"

Azrael looked at him as if he'd grown a third head and Weedles were crawling out of his ears. "You are remarkably persistent. I—"

"No, no, don't tell me;" Orion said, lifting one hand in front of her as a "stop" signal and pressing the other to his temple psychic-style. "You _appreciate_ my persistence." He flashed a smile at her, the kind he would give to an old friend.

Azrael's mouth was open as if she were about to vehemently deny it—and then she burst out laughing. Hearing her laugh infected Orion, and soon the two of them were yucking it up, backs pressed against the opposing walls of the hallway, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. A few moments later when they had recovered some, Azrael regarded him with something almost like fondness.

… Before sliding into her room and closing the door in his face.

Orion stared at it blankly for a moment, jaw hanging. In the laughing fit he'd forgotten to block it. He threw his fists against the wood and shouted through it, "I won't let you _out_ if you don't let me go with you! I'll sleep outside your door!"

"I can climb out the window," came the languid voice from within. Orion could hear her moving around the room, zipping and unzipping things and rustling a plastic bag.

"I'll sleep by the entrance of the cave, then!" he shouted, and actually moved to go to his room to get his things when he heard the sound of her chuckling inside her room again.

"I'm kidding," she said so softly that Orion almost didn't hear it. "I'm going to get my Pokemon and heal them up and tomorrow we'll—we'll go through Mount Moon together. But I swear, if you don't wake up at the same time I do, I'm leaving you there. I will _not_ be held back in any way; you understand, Orion?"

"Quite, Madame." He said, bowing at the door even though he knew she couldn't see it. "Do you need to restock at the PokeMart? I know I do."

"Sure," came the voice from behind the door. "I'll meet you in the lobby in about ten minutes so we can go there."

"Sounds good to me!" Orion said, beaming. "And what time do you want to set out tomorrow morning?"

A moment of silence where Orion was almost worried she'd take the whole thing back. And then, "Make it seven."

Orion closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. "This'll be fun, I can tell. Seven it is!"


	20. Chapter 20 Ciara

Chapter 20

Once they had successfully removed themselves from the building, Ciara felt a lot better. Inside the piercing cold had sent shivers down her spine and rebelled entirely against her fiery blood—now that she was out in the humid summer night air, she actually felt as if she could breath again, and the coursing relief that suddenly flooded her veins, along with the residual, displaced adrenaline, had her whooping and hollering before she could control herself. And once she started, she couldn't stop.

"_Woo-hoo!_ Did you _see those things?_ They were _wicked!_ Oh, Gav, that was _awesome_ when you full-on smashed that one in the head with Cubone's Bone Club! And you two," she paused for maybe half a second to regard the shaken sisters, "Your Pokemon were _on it!_ You guys didn't say you were such great trainers!"

Elva gave Ciara a wavering, faint smile that peered out from behind her disheveled hair. "Thanks… we try."

"Ciara, maybe you should sit down and do some deep breathing for a while—" Gaveriel was suggesting behind her. She whipped around and grabbed him in a fierce hug before shoving his head into the crook of her elbow and proceeding to give him the second-roughest noogie of his life. The first roughest had taken a small patch of his hair out when they were kids.

"I can't believe we're alive, man!"

"Being alive is, typically, a good thing, yes…" Gav muttered from under her arm, his voice muffled. "Breathing is also a good thing. And it's something I can't do right now, Ci."

Laughing, she released her stranglehold on her brother and plopped down beside the two girls on the floor. "You feeling okay, Visora? You don't look so hot."

Visora had been remarkably quiet the whole journey down the tower, but now she reanimated. "_Okay?_ Am I _okay?_ We just got attacked by at least a hundred Ghost Pokemon that were trying to dismember us and were forced to run for our lives down six flights of tombstone-ridden stairs! And you ask me if I'm _okay?_" And then, all at once, she burst into laughter. "But I'm alive. And I suppose it could be worse."

Elva started giggling too, and Gaveriel had to fight back a snort. Soon, they were all cracking up and slapping their knees, rolling on the floor—in Ciara's case—and struggling to breathe. After a few moments when the hype had died down some, Gaveriel got up.

"We should head back to the Center, don't you think?" The question was said to Ciara, but directed at them all. Visora got shakily to her feet and nodded.

"Elva and I are staying there, too. I could really use a bite to eat, though…" she glanced at Gaveriel and Ciara, and suddenly seemed a lot younger. Ciara got the sense that she was about to put herself out on a limb; the look on her face was the unmistakable fear of rejection. "You guys… want to, y'know, join us? My treat."

Ciara's face broke into a smile, and died just as suddenly as she caught the grave look on her brother's face. Surely, he wasn't going to deny them after what they'd all just been through…?

"I absolutely, one-hundred-percent refuse," Ciara was about to attack him from behind, when, "… to let you pay for us." She tripped on her own feet and stumbled forward, which got Elva laughing again. Gaveriel turned to face his sister exclusively and winked, as if to say, _Honestly, Ci; what kind of person do you think I am?_

"Old maid," she muttered, grinning at him.

"Crotchety geezer," he responded with equal affection.

---------

Later that evening the four dined on various flavors of milkshake while discussing the events of the day. Gaveriel and Visora had gotten into a light-hearted debate about whether chocolate or vanilla was the superior flavor while Ciara and Elva had rolled their eyes at them over their dual strawberry-flavored ones. The Pokemon Center was very accommodating, except for an old man who had told them that they shouldn't have crossed the ghosts of Pokemon. When Elva had tried to explain to the man that they were Gastlies, he'd simply shook his head as if he pitied her and said morosely, "Poor child. The fright's gone to her head." After the man had wandered away the four of them had burst into laughter.

And that was how they spent their night, talking and relaxing, winding down and coming off of their adrenaline highs. No one was really in an antagonizing mood—Ciara supposed that was what a near-death experience did to people—and the atmosphere was light and comfortable.

That was, until Gaveriel stretched and looked at his watch before remarking to Ciara, "I think we should head in for the night. I have a new lead on the Rockets that I want to look into tomorrow morning."

An awkward silence settled over the table. It seemed that everyone had been avoiding the topic of Gaveriel and Ciara's "profession," so to speak, all night. Now that it was out in the open, the four were sharply reminded of the unpleasant situation that had arisen the last time they'd bid each other farewell.

Visora excused herself to step outside for a moment, and Elva looked up at her sister with a flash of concern that Ciara caught immediately. Gaveriel hadn't seen it, as he was gathering up their cups and moving to return them to the front desk, but Ciara casually—or, as casually as she could—got up, stretched, and said to Elva that she was going to the bathroom. Elva seemed to know that Ciara was going after Visora, but didn't say anything about it. Her expression was torn between gratitude and apprehension.

Outside, Ciara thought at first that Visora had wandered off. When she looked around a bit more, however, she found her sitting with her back pressed up against the wall of the Center, legs pulled up to her chest and arms draped down over them. Ciara, without thinking, pulled up a patch of cement beside her and sat.

"Hey," she said, hoping she didn't seem too intrusive.

"Hello." Visora shot a sidelong glance at her, mildly annoyed, as if to say _What are you doing out here?_

Ciara bit her lip and went on. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Visora gave a half-snort half-chuckle. "You won't like them very much."

"Try me," Ciara said, bristling as she felt the beginnings of a challenge. She tried to tell herself that Visora hadn't meant to goad her, but the fact remained that it was just the way Ciara worked—she read into everything and was constantly on the look out for possible fights, even when she was feeling peaceable.

"It's Elva," Visora said, averting her eyes and leaning her red head back against the wood of the Center. She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, and suddenly Ciara could imagine her ten years from now, taking a long drag off of a cigarette, perhaps a stressed-out business woman. Blinking the sudden image away and wondering where it came from, Ciara listened as Visora went on. "She really, really likes you guys. Granted, she likes _most_ people moments after she meets them, but if we happen to part ways, she doesn't mind so much and moves on soon enough. But I saw the way her face lit up when she saw you two again, at the Tower, and it wasn't just because you showed up at a remarkably opportune time to lend us a hand."

Ciara wasn't sure what to say, and wasn't sure she was following Visora's train of thought. "And this is a bad thing, why?"

Visora laughed softly. "It shouldn't be a bad thing. I wish it weren't. But I can't have her corresponding with you or your brother. You're getting yourselves very deep in illegal matters—"

"Illegal matters?" Ciara interrupted, straightening up and feeling a flicker of indignation spark within her. Flint and steel. "Last time I checked, the Rockets were doing a _hell_ of a lot more "illegal" things than Gav and I are doing."

"The fact remains," Visora said through her teeth, "that you are crossing the law. Elva's a romantic—she loves the old Westerns where outlaws are glorified. I'm not saying you're outlaws," she went on, cutting off the biting remark that was growing in Ciara's throat, "but you and your brother are going up against an extremely dangerous, very large group of people, and that's basically the same idea. You have no idea how badly Elva wished that you were serious when you asked if we wanted to join you."

"I _was_ serious," Ciara blurted out before she could stop herself. "Gav and I were talking today and he told met that I've already said too much to you people."

Visora was silent for a moment. "Maybe you would want us to join you, but your brother is a different story."

"He's got a name, you know…" Ciara said. Then, as she pondered exactly _why_ Visora didn't seem willing to say "Gaveriel," the girl went on.

"I don't want Elva getting hurt. That's the bottom of the issue."

"Well, I don't blame you." Ciara got to her feet and brushed off her black pants, crossing her arms and leaning up against the wall. She wanted to go back inside before she completely crushed any form of respect they had for each other. Yet she felt there was still more to say. A question popped in her mind, and, like everything else in her life, it came rushing out before it could be edited.

"Why are you so uptight about the law, anyway?"

Shocked silence. Visora's head snapped up towards her and her piercing green eyes that looked almost yellow in the fluorescent lighting from inside warily regarded her. Ciara felt like she was being dissected like any butterfly on a lab table. "No reason. I just don't approve of what you and your—and _Gaveriel_ are doing." She turned back to face forward, but Ciara noted the stiffness in her shoulders. Obviously she'd struck a nerve. "You should leave it up to the law to bust Team Rocket."

"You know _why_ we don't just leave it up to the law, Visora?" Ciara found herself saying. This time she legitimately tried to stop the flow of words. She braced every ounce of self-restraint and common sense she possessed to attempt and block off the stream, but it was no use. "It's because the _law_ didn't help our father or mother when the Rockets went after them!"

Visora looked as if she'd had some sort of catty comment in store, but the look on Ciara's face must have been striking, because the look died off instantly. Suddenly the untouchable girl was all ears.

"Your parents?"

"Yeah, our parents," Ciara said, feeling hotheaded but already coming down off her high. She felt increasingly stupid and childish as the seconds wore on. Honestly, she thought to herself. _I'm acting like a self-pitying three-year-old, and that's_ exactly _the way Visora will see me, too._

Ciara wasn't continuing, so Visora spoke up.

"I wondered why you two were out in the woods alone," she prompted, the dialectical equivalent of poking something dying with a stick to get it to move again. "Did Team Rocket convince them to join?"

Ciara's flame of passion and defiance roared to life again. "_No!_" she half-shouted before she stopped herself. "No. That's not it at _all._ Mom and Dad would have _died_ before joining Team Rocket…" she let herself trail off. The end of the sentence was dancing on the tip of her tongue, and, resigned, she let it fall off into the air. "They _did_."

There was no sound from Visora, but Ciara could just imagine the look on her face. A mix of shock and horror. She needed to get out. She was this close to snapping at the girl and the fact that Visora had been so adamant against the cause Ciara had devoted her life to wasn't helping. Not to _mention_ the fact that she'd just spilled her darkest mark of pain out to the girl, leaving herself vulnerable. She started for the door, and had gotten as far as putting her hand against the cool metal of the doorknob when another brash sentence escaped her. This one was considerably different from anything she'd said in the past, though—it came out soft and understanding, yet firm and intelligent. It sounded like something Gaveriel would say.

"Sometimes you can't leave it up to the law. Sometimes, the law fails you and you have to take matters into your own hands."

With that said, Ciara pulled open the door and let herself back into the well-lit, friendly Center where Gaveriel and Elva were seated at their table. The warm atmosphere was gone, though—and Ciara got the distinct feeling she'd left one very disturbed young girl out there in the night, looking at the stars and contemplating God knew what.


	21. Chapter 21 Nija

Chapter 21

Nija was never a morning person. She never tried to be, strived to be or even vaguely _wanted_ to be one. This morning filled her with no sudden change of heart.

The sun was pouring in through her window—how had it gotten open?—and roasting straight through her eyelids, bleeding into her cornea and making them ache. The last thing she wanted to do was get up out of bed.

The first thing she wanted to do, however, was to get the hell out of Viridian City. With that as her motivation, the girl pulled herself groggily out of her bed, giving the downy sheets a fond pat, as it would be her last night rooming there. She'd packed her things and showered the night before—probably why she was so exhausted this morning—and was ready to go. Charmander was safe in his Pokeball, and so were Pidgey and Nidoran. Nija felt confident, something that gave her immense satisfaction.

_See,_ she told herself as she pulled her fingers through her hair, _I can be just as brave as Amaris._ After a few seconds of getting her nails caught painfully in her dark locks, Nija decided that it was too much trouble, since the strands would be messed up by noon, anyway.

Charmander's Pokeball caught Nija's eye as she moved back to the bed to get into her outfit for the day. After she'd pulled on her beaten up long jeans and blue t-shirt, she picked the device up and tossed it from hand to hand. Catching it after three or so rounds, she impulsively clicked the button twice to let out her Pokemon.

Charmander had obviously been asleep. The instant it materialized at her feet it sat up, stretched, and scratched at its head with one foot. Looking grumpy, the lizard regarded her.

"Good morning to you, too," she said, sitting down beside it and rubbing its head fondly. Charmander seemed to think this was a plausible excuse for bothering it so early in the morning and leaned into her hand, making an almost-purring sound. "I was thinking, buddy, how are we going to beat the Pewter City gym? They use Rock types there, and I'm afraid you guys aren't quite what the doctor ordered."

Charmander regarded her with one teal eye and snorted a puff of smoke from its nostrils, as if to say _I can take 'em._

Nija laughed. "I'm sure you can," she said, sighing and getting to her feet. "If Bulbasaur actually obeyed Jason I'm sure he wouldn't have much trouble."

Pulling on her red backpack, slipping her pokeball-fastened belt around her waist and grabbing the Chansey-keychain from the bedside table, Nija pushed the door open—

… And clipped Jason in the face.

"Whoa!" she exclaimed, pulling back and knocking into the bed with her overstuffed pack. "What the heck are you doing out there?"

"Ow," Jason commented conversationally, rubbing his nose. "I was about to knock on your door, what d'ya think?" he said, reverting to a slang she hadn't heard him use before. "A-a-anyway, I wanted to know when you're heading out to the forest."

He, too, was adorned in a backpack roughly half his size and a belt of Pokemon. They looked like bizarre twins who shared no genetic makeup. "Um, right now, I guess." She said, regarding him with interest.

"Ah. Well, I was thinking that you and I could like… travel together for a while. Until we get to Pewter and all."

"Oh," she said, blinking. To be honest, she'd felt rather sad knowing that she would be parting ways with Jason last night, as it had been a long time since she felt she had a friend to talk to. Granted, she'd only known the guy for two days, but they had a remarkable amount of things in common and connected on a level that Nija hadn't thought boys were capable of. "That would be cool."

"Alright then!" he said, clapping his hands and starting off down the hallway. "It's kind of embarrassing—I haven't even made my first catch yet. I'm hoping they'll have some kind of cool bug Pokemon out in the forest."

"I bet'cha they will!" Nija said, feeling light-hearted and buoyant as they started off into the sunlit morning after returning their keys.

---------

It was amazing how much of a difference having a traveling partner made. Nija had been ready to take a wrong turn down a patch of overgrown pathway when Jason had pulled her back and kicked the moss off of a sign that pointed them down the correct way. Nija was shocked—if she'd been by herself she would have been hopelessly lost and probably would have spent _days_ in the forest, wandering around. She and Jason were positively _showered_ in wild Pokemon—Kakuna fell from the trees, Caterpie scurried underfoot, Pidgeys swooped down in a mad frenzy. Bulbasaur had begrudgingly fought off the fray of creatures—probably not because Jason _wanted_ it to, but because it felt like it—and Jason made his first catch. It was a level five Caterpie, and he had proceeded to spin Nija around in circles and holler his head off. Nija was shocked at the sudden outburst of activity, but hadn't been able to help herself from joining in—Jason's euphoria was contagious.

"Nice job, dude," she said, clapping him on the back. "You probably scared away all the other ones now."

Jason had merely winked and said, "You know you're just jealous!"

It was around twelve in the afternoon the following day when the duo had reached Pewter City, and Nija could scarcely remember being so happy to see any such place in her life. Jason and she had never endured the surprising chill of camping outdoors in the deceptively hot evenings of summer, and had been immensely put out by how _frigid_ it became once the sun set. Charmander had lit them a fire grudgingly, and they'd somehow managed to catch some sleep before starting off again earlier than either of them normally rose the next morning.

Charmander and Bulbasaur had popped out of their Pokeballs in perfect unison half way there and refused to go back in. At first, Nija had been frustrated and embarrassed, but found that fewer wild Pokemon attacked them when the two were out and growling at anything that dared to cross their paths.

Pewter City was charming in a sophisticated way. Many of the buildings were made of stone instead of wood, a clever little attribute to the town color theme that had Nija wondering if _all_ towns and cities did this. If _that_ were the case, she shuddered to think what Fuchsia City looked like.

She and Jason made a beeline to the Pokemon Center. When they signed up for rooms Nija was appalled to find that this Center, too, donned the exact same type of Chansey-adorned keychain.

After they'd dropped off their Pokemon, they decided to take a walk around the town and explore. Pewter was even larger than Viridian had been, which made Pallet seem even _more_ dwarfed. It took them about an hour to wander around—they got distracted often—exploring all the sights and popping into random convenience stores. Jason made jokes about people that they passed by, imitating two chattering girls in extraordinarily short shorts and causing Nija to snort painfully through her nose in an attempt to stifle her laughter. That, of course, had set Jason off _again_, and for the rest of the day every time Nija laughed he would snort comically beside her. Nija's face was sore from smiling.

When they approached an imposing-looking museum they'd pooled their money for tickets and strolled in the blessed air-conditioned halls.

"Check out the size of that thing," Jason said, gawking at a Pokemon fossil that was stretched at least thirty feet long. "It's freakin' _huge!_"

"Jeez, how'd they manage to keep the fossil intact?" Nija wondered aloud, pressing one hand against its glass case. "You'd think it would've broken into a billion pieces when they tried to move it."

"'Aerodactyl,'" Jason read off of the plaque. "Prehistoric Pokemon. Believed to have genetic makeup linked to the dinosaurs," He looked up to Nija and broke out into a broad grin. "I am _so_ getting me one of those."

Nija stared at Jason with her brow furrowed and her mouth slightly open before bursting out into laughter. "Um, Jason," she said, snorting again—much to Jason's apparent delight—"They're kinda, y'know, _extinct._"

"So?" he asked, and the sheer honesty and genuine quality of his determination made Nija's own Pokemon trainer instincts tingle. She was suddenly painstakingly aware of the gym within walking distance.

"Hey, Jason, you done looking around in here?" she asked, fidgeting and playing with a strand of her hair. "I wanna challenge the gym leader already."

"Yeah, I'm done," Jason said, grinning. The grin fell off his face when as he ticked off something on three fingers and frowned. "But wait… you only have Charmander, Pidgey and Nidoran, right?"

Nija blinked. "Yeah… does it really matter, though?"

Jason frowned and bit his lip. "Well, I dunno… it just seems to me that none of those types have an advantage over Rock. And Pidgey'll get severely owned."

Nija sighed deeply and plopped down on a chair next to the enormous fossil. She'd temporarily forgotten about the worries that had plagued her just that morning in the light of a possible Gym Badge. "I guess you're right. What do you think I should do?"

"Well," Jason said, stretching and rolling his left shoulder. "You could always walk around the forest and catch a bug type and train it up decently strong. Or you could train Charmander like mad and make it super buff—then maybe the type disadvantages won't matter so much."

"I suppose so. Yeah, I think I'm going to do that right now," she said, getting up. As she headed down the stairs to the first floor of the museum, Jason called after her.

"Which one?"

"I'm sure Charmander can take 'em, if we train enough!"

---------

Nija had always known Charmander loved to fight, but now the true nature of its competitive streak was revealed. She'd never known just how _deeply_ the Pokemon's desire to win had run, but at the mention of a trainer that she wasn't sure she could beat, Charmander's performance upped by quite a few notches. Gone were the few-second's delay between spoken command and action—Charmander obeyed every attack without hesitation. Nija was ecstatic, and ardently hoped that this new turn of events wouldn't revert once the gym leader had been defeated.

They trained out in the grassy patches on the outskirts of Pewter all day. Nija felt a pang of remorse for not spending time training Nidoran and Pidgey equally, but knew there would be time for that once the gym leader went down. It seemed that her whole _life_ was on hold until after that event took place. _Oh well,_ Nija thought as Charmander successfully K.O.'d another wild Pokemon, _That_ is _pretty much my life now; training._

Charmander looked up behind her and Nija wondered vaguely if he'd just been boosted up another level, because he winked at her in a very cheeky way. _Oh yeah,_ she thought. _I don't mind it one bit._

By the time Charmander actually seemed to be slowing down, Nija got the distinct feeling he was quite a few levels stronger. She'd done some research on how to tell, but found that the higher up he got the harder it was to tell between level 11 and 12 or 12 and 13. She was contented that he'd jumped at _least_ four, and recalled him to his Pokeball, intent on healing him up and returning to the Pokemon Center. She wasn't sure if she was ready to beat the Pewter gym leader right then and there, but she did feel like trying.

She healed up her team in the Center and loitered around the outside of the imposing gym, trying to keep out of sight of the window. She wasn't all that keen on being spotted by the personnel inside.

Fingering Charmander's Pokeball, Nija took a deep breath. Was she really ready to face her first gym leader? She felt confident that she'd trained well, but she had no way of knowing if it was good enough. The Pokeball seemed to grow heavy with significance in her hand as she realized that people were walking by the gym doors on their way to their daily shopping's and glancing at her with mild interest. Nija felt her face flush and minimized Charmander's ball, hooking it back to her belt and attempting to look casual as she leaned against the wall beside the doors. Nonchalantly reaching over and taking a pamphlet from a clear plastic box affixed near her head, Nija flicked the glossy sheet open and began to study the pictures of Brock and his assortment of Rock types without actually taking in any of the words.

Back in the day, according to her mother, there had actually been men paid to stand outside the doors of these gyms and accost passing trainers, asking them if they wanted advice on beating the gym leader within. Nija found this idea very daunting, and couldn't imagine actually spending all day standing outside in the sun, trying to scare young trainers into awe and respect for her employee. This new method, a nice, non-imposing little plastic box beside the door, was much more agreeable to her.

Most of the information in the pamphlet was entirely uninteresting, Nija found. There were depressing statistics of Brock's Pokemon within a table that allowed Nija an insight to how the gyms were run. Apparently, these days you were required to give the level of the strongest Pokemon you planned to use against the leader, and they would choose their Pokemon accordingly so as not to completely kill your Pokemon in battle. Nija had always nursed a small, rather secret dignity that flared up slightly at the thought of being accommodated to like some child, but quickly stamped out the indignation at the thought of dragging Charmander's corpse back to the Center in pieces after having it body-slammed by a level 100 Onix. She supposed this new method was more practical, and infinitely safer for the Pokemon in question.

Eyes scanning the shiny surface of the map-like leaflet, Nija's attention was caught once more by a small biography of Brock in the lower left-hand corner. A tall, broad-shouldered young man with spiky brown hair and eyes nearly-shut in a warm smile peered out from a tanned face framed by a strong chin and ears that stuck out a bit awkwardly from his head, as if he was having a hard time growing into them. Nija was shocked at how young Brock Slate looked, and quickly ran her eyes down the bottommost edge of the paper, looking for a copyright date. Finding it, she wasn't surprised to see that the leaflet was _dreadfully_ out of date—it had been printed nearly twelve years ago. Frowning, she looked back at the picture of the smiling young man and half-heartedly scanned the paragraph about his life.

Apparently Brock had grown up the eldest of many siblings, taking care of them for a daunting number of years before his previously MIA father returned and Brock had been allowed to travel the lands of Kanto and Jhoto to his leisure. He'd always been a Rock-type trainer, it said, although Nija could hardly muster up surprise at this. All the gym leaders she'd ever heard of seemed to have known _precisely_ what they wanted to train from the very first breath of life they'd taken. Nija envied their seemingly unquestioned drive and sheer knowledge of success.

Reading on, Nija was shocked to find that this man who looked not ten years older than herself was already married and with a son, who's name was very hard to pronounce and began with a "G." Surprised, Nija folded the pamphlet up, and, about to return it to its clear box, decided against it and folded it up smaller so as to pocket it in her jeans. Maybe if she helped to deplete the supply of these outdated things the company that manufactured them would be forced to make newer ones.

Nija hadn't noticed it before, but now it seemed painfully obvious as she was stuffing the pamphlet into her pants, that a very large, rather temporary-looking sign had been plastered beneath the plaque that read "PEWTER CITY POKEMON GYM" with "LEADER: BROCK SLATE."

_Gym temporarily run by Sean Armstrong, first apprentice of Mr. Slate._

"What?" Nija mused to herself, frowning very hard at the cardboard sign. Why wasn't Brock leading the gym? Was he off somewhere on business, or something? On second inspection, the sign looked _extremely_ decrepit and old, as if it was originally intended to be temporary but had weathered through a number of years untouched. Nija frowned, and, gripped with an impulse, pushed the doors open.

The gym appeared abandoned. The air conditioners were all running, but there wasn't anyone in sight and all the lights were off. Perhaps Mr. Armstrong had run out for something real quick? Feeling like a trespasser, but knowing that the Gym _should_ be open at this time of day, Nija wandered a bit further inside, making sure to keep the heavy door propped open with one foot so as not to lock herself in the dark.

"Hello?" she tried tentatively, creeping as far in as her leg would allow. She caught sight of sudden movement above and peered up into the darkness, straining her eyes to catch it again.

"Someone there?" called down a gruff, clipped voice that sounded as though it were thick with some kind of accent. It was coming from the ceiling, amazingly. "Hold on. I'll be right down."

Suddenly Nija's heart was hammering. Young trainers didn't just barge into Gyms and inquire about the leader's health. They came in, bothered the leaders—temporary or not—for a battle, not small talk. Nija's hand wound around Charmander's Pokeball. _I guess this is it?_

"Oi, could you turn on the lights for me?" the voice called again, and Nija frantically looked around her for the standard set of light switches. "'Fraid they're a bit more complicated than that. You'll find a—" the voice got cut off and a large crash sounded from above. "Ow. You'll find a fuse box hidden behind the fourth rock from the bottom just to your right… the big, flat one with the little indentation etched in it… yes, that one!" he called as Nija's fingers looped into a strange, deliberate feeling hole and clicked the lock of a hidden door open. "Now, hit the switches one, three, five, seven, nine and 11. But don't hit 13, whatever you do. Now you can continue on to 15, 17, and 19. Excellent! Thank you."

Nija closed the trap door awkwardly, blinking around the now-lit gym. Wondering why the gym leader had been working in the dark up on the balcony that ran around the top perimeter of the place, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and waited.

A man roughly twice her size came lumbering down a stairwell that almost seemed too small to accommodate his girth. He wasn't overweight by any means, but his sheer bulk was intimidating. Nija vaguely thought she could fit both of her thighs comfortably in the space his left bicep took up.

"You want a battle, I assume?" the man was asking, wiping dusty hands on tattered blue jeans.

Nija nodded, half-aware of what she was saying. "Yeah… if it's not too much trouble, ahh… is Mr. Slate off on business?"

The mountain of a man had been lumbering across the dry expanse of rocky outcroppings, but now froze in his tracks for a moment, halfway through mopping his brow, and now it was without saying that he was the Mr. Armstrong in question. He turned around and regarded Nija with a wary eye. "You don't know? God, that's the fourth youngster who's come in here today asking where Brock's gone off to."

Nija blinked, feeling slightly abashed at her apparent ignorance and scuffed one sneaker in the dust. The man continued on his way to the other side of the gym, and Nija, alarmed, realized that he wasn't going to answer her.

_Well,_ that's _kind of rude…_ she grumbled inwardly, clutching at Charmander's Pokeball and observing the chrome shine. Armstrong was calling to her from over the gym again, and she glanced up to hear him better. Nija figured they were about a hundred feet apart.

"One on one, two on two, three on three? Or do you want a full on battle?"

Nija gulped and clutched Charmander's Pokeball so tightly she was surprised he didn't pop out and roast her for trying to crush him alive. "O-one-on-one is great."

"Very well," Armstrong said, selecting from behind a particularly large rock what appeared to be a shoebox of Pokeballs. Nija gawped at him, wondering vaguely why he kept them down here, in a box, where anyone could waltz in and take one. He paused as he was pawing around in the dilapidated cardboard and regarded her. "What level is your Pokemon in question?"

Nija blinked, and invented, "13," In reality Charmander could be anywhere from level ten to 15, so she decided to level it off in between.

Armstrong nodded reasonably and selected a seemingly random Pokeball from the collection before unceremoniously slapping the lid back on the others and stuffing them back behind the rock. Nija was still a little put out by this display, but when he made eye contact with her from behind scraggly brown hair and a thick, scraggly beard, Nija snapped back into focus. "You ready?"

"Yeah," she said, pleased that her voice, unlike her knees, wasn't shaking.

In unison their arms shot forward and Nija crowed "Charmander!" while Armstrong growled "Geodude!"

Nija felt weak with relief. She'd expected it to be Onix, and in all honesty she hadn't been sure if she could have beaten one. This deceptively small, gravity-defying boulder seemed the easier of the two by far.

It was typical kosher to allow the more skilled trainer the first attack, and, muttering a few words of warning to Charmander and bracing herself just as much as her Pokemon was, Nija awaited the Tackle attack that would no doubt come in just a moment's time. Her adrenaline was pumping through her veins fiercely.

"Defense Curl!" Armstrong called out to Geodude, and, abashed, Nija watched as Geodude's long, rocky arms wrapped around itself and a soft shifting of stone and gravel scraping against each other reached her ears. The lights reflected off Geodude's stony brow a bit brighter, and Nija realized, with a wave of awe—that Geodude had made its very skin harder.

Nija was a bit worried, as she'd been counting on that attack to gauge how powerful Geodude was compared to Charmander. Now it was her turn, however, and she stammered out, "Ah, um. Scratch!"

Charmander practically flew at the rocky figure ahead of it, lashing out with two sets of fierce little claws and latching them sharply into its head and dragged them across it with a vengeance.

The effect this had on Geodude was likened to a fly bouncing haphazardly off of the hide of a three-ton rhinoceros. Geodude looked bored and tired as it executed Armstrong's order of "Body Slam!" and positively ground the orange lizard into the dusty rock bed ground.

Nija was beside herself with horror. "Charmander!" she cried out, quickly detaching a Pokeball from her belt and preparing to call her Pokemon back. To her utter astonishment a snort of strain and frustration sounded from the foot-deep crater that Geodude had created, and, miraculously, the face of her orange companion appeared from the rim of the dip. Charmander was trying to pull itself out and continue the battle, but Nija knew that it was only a matter of time now. That first attack had clearly put into sharp perspective just how _hopeless_ Charmander's one offensive technique would be.

"Growl," she said helplessly, hoping that she could weaken Geodude's onslaught of attacks by a fraction of an inch. The second the command was out of her mouth Nija stamped her foot down furiously and clapped a hand to her mouth. _She should have used a Potion instead!_

Armstrong seemed mildly amused. "Don't carry any healing items on your person?" Charmander was growling ferociously, raising the small stubs of what would someday be wings on its back and arching its spine. Geodude didn't appear to be phased, but regarded Charmander with a new awareness, seeming to wake up from its "you've-got-to-be-kidding-me" sleepy disinterest.

"Let's finish this," Armstrong was saying, shrugging his shoulders and pointing one thin hand out to Charmander. "A tackle attack ought to do it."

Before Nija could even form a coherent thought Geodude had rushed forward and slammed roughly into Charmander, sending it flying through the air to skid slowly, painfully to a halt at Nija's feet. Charmander twitched for a moment before laying still on the dusty floor, angry red marks showing up remarkably clearly on its orange flank. There was no doubt about it; this was a clear K.O.

Nija felt numb and rubbery as she gently tapped the button on Charmander's Pokeball and recalled her beaten companion. Geodude shook the dust off its shoulders and arms and regarded Nija evenly. "Better luck next time," Armstrong called, also dusting himself off.

Nija flushed red and turned away from the man, unable to thank him for taking time out of his schedule to face off against her. She was about ready to just dart from the vicinity when he called out behind her back, "Didn't you want to know what happened to Brock? And you gotta take Geodude with you back to the Center. He'll just lead you up to the doors and leave then."

Nija spun around, abashed and shocked. "What? You mean I have to—have to walk back here and let everyone know that I—" she cut herself off, realizing exactly how _insolent_ a brat she was making herself sound like. "Um, never mind."

Armstrong looked surprised for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Believe me, if it were up to me I'd let you go back there on your own, but you know how it is…" Nija nodded, feeling about as big as one of the dust motes still floating around the room. As she was turning away, he finished up quite suddenly with, "Now, let me be the first to inform you of the unhappy news of Mr. and Mrs. Slate's deaths approximately eight years ago."

Freezing in mid step and whirling around to regard Mr. Armstrong once again, Nija felt her mouth dropping open even as her mind whirled into overdrive.

"Wh-what? What happened to them?"

Armstrong was already making his way back to the suffering stairwell, but answered her without looking once at her again. "No one's really quite sure. They were missing, and then they were found, although not in the state that we would have liked them in."

Nija shuddered involuntarily as the man made his way, creaking with every other step, along the stairwell. A thought struck her with the force of a rock to the head, and she blurted out before she could stop herself, knowing that she sounded like a morbidly curious rubber-necker, "What about their kid? G… um, their son?"

"He and his little sister are both well alive and fine. I believe they're out on their Pokemon journeys at the moment. I'll be seeing you again in a while, I imagine?"

Nija nodded numbly before realizing what he meant. A rematch. Flushing with renewed shame, Nija muttered, "I expect so," before turning and practically fleeing out the door, a very solemn Rock type hovering after her every step.

---------

Everyone seemed to know this walk of shame, and although Nija tried to hide her face it was no use—people were chuckling, pointing, shaking their heads, smirking, muttering behind their hands or merely gawping at her as she went. She wished ardently that the stupid rock would just turn around and float on home—she wasn't so _daft_ as to run out into the woods and get herself into a battle with a wild Pokemon or another trainer with an arsenal that was entirely unconscious. A part of her knew that this was the _law_, the standard safety procedure, but she could be pissed off if she wanted to be.

_Will I_ ever _win a proper battle with another human being?_ Nija thought glumly, feeling utterly sorry for herself as Geodude began to round off to the Pokemon Center's double doors. _Or am I doomed to fight wild Pidgeys and Caterpies for the rest of my life?_

_Well_, Nija, she countered herself bitterly, _what did you expect, really? You rush in there and challenge the gym leader like a true novice, choke and forget to heal Charmander up properly between attacks and you're wondering why you lost?_

Her inner voice had a very Amaris-like tone sometimes, or Amaris dreadfully mixed with her mother. The combination was indeed disturbing, blending a self-bashing tone of sarcasm and a scolding "you'll-think-twice-next-time" air that had her dragging her feet back to the Center, Geodude hovering silently at her side. They'd finally reached the doors and Nija glared at Geodude until it seemed satisfied that she was going to go in and, turning around somberly, began its journey back to the gym.

She'd just reached out for the Pokemon Center's door when it opened in her face, nearly causing her to fall backwards onto her rear. Reminded of her run-in with Jason that very morning, she dryly thought that karma was doing its job today and staggered back into an upright position.

Framed in the doorway were two teenagers that looked about two or three years older than she. One was a tall boy—the one who'd opened the door on her just now—with white-blond hair that looked like it hadn't been combed that day, although Nija knew she wasn't one to talk, and wide blue—or were they green?—eyes that were now wincing as he spouted out apology after apology.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry—this is the second time in two days I've almost smashed someone—are you okay? I'm sorry, should have been thinking about the possibility of someone else on the other side of the door—are you all right?"

"Ah—yeah, yeah, I'm good. It's alright, totally." Nija blinked, bewildered, before she caught the small smile creeping onto the face of the boy's companion.

This girl was about Nija's height, maybe a few inches taller, with long, neat black hair pulled deftly into a braid that hung around her waist. She had cool grey eyes that were at the moment half-lidded in amusement at her partner's fussing. Both of the strangers were rather pale, as if they spent a great deal of time indoors. Nija wondered vaguely if they could _possibly_ be siblings—and denounced the idea. Other than their skin tone, these two people looked _nothing_ alike.

"I'm okay? Really?" Nija tried as the boy picked up the Pokeball she'd dropped. "Seriously. I'd tell you if I were mortally wounded. I'm good."

"Orion, she's fine," the girl said, chuckling. "Do you do this to every person you accidentally bump into?"

"Hey, to be fair, I sent you _flying_ when I ran into you yesterday," he said, grinning sheepishly. Turning back to Nija, he said, "Well, I really am sorry."

"Oh, I believe it," Nija said, a small smile peering onto her face almost against her will. It was difficult to stay brooding and angry for long, especially with such entertaining people before her. "Pleased to meet you?"

Orion beamed and shook her outstretched hand. "I'm Orion, Fremont. And you?"

"Nija Ikira," she said. Turning her gaze to the girl, she offered her now-free hand.

"Oh," the girl said, seeming to snap out of a temporary daze. "Sorry. I'm Azrael."

Nija noticed that she didn't give a last name, but that wasn't really concerning her at the moment. Instead, she was trying to place exactly where she had heard the name "Fremont" before. It was so burningly familiar, and she really felt that she should know it. Her memory wasn't being helpful, though, so she stored it away and decided to think about it later.

"Well, I'm gonna drop off my Pokemon at the Center," she said, moving around the two strangers and turning to the front desk. After a moment, she turned around again. "You two heading out to Mount Moon or something?"

Orion nodded. "Pretty soon, actually," he said. "Well, after we stop at the Mart to get some supplies, that is. It's been a pleasure, Nija—I mean, besides the whole me hitting you in the face thing, that is—" he seemed to be wincing at every word he said, and Nija gave him a reassuring smile.

"It's alright, dude. See you!"

"Bye," Orion called cheerily, holding the door for Azrael.

The black-haired girl have Nija a somewhat sad smile and called back, "Bye," as the two of them walked out of the Center—and out of Nija's life, most likely—forever.

---------

_How depressing,_ Nija thought to herself, tossing her newly-healed pokeball up in the air and catching it. _You meet all these cool people and then poof! They're off and you probably never see them again._

Indeed, training was a lonely route. Nija found herself wondering if Jason and she would part ways after this, and secretly she hoped they wouldn't. She found that she rather _liked_ traveling with someone else—she wasn't sure why the thought hadn't occurred to her before.

_Well,_ duh, _Nija_, she told herself, rolling her eyes. _As if there was anyone to travel with back in Pallet._ She could just see it now: "Hey, Amaris, wanna go on a Pokemon journey with me? Hyuk hyuk!" She'd get denied so fast her head would spin. And after it was done spinning she'd have to get it checked for brain damage, because there was no way short of a severe head injury that she'd even _consider_ befriending the insufferable brat.

Thinking of Amaris worked its magic on her yet again, and Nija was on her feet and starting off towards the grassy area to train again. She wondered vaguely if she could bottle the intense ambition and motivation thinking about her rival inspired in her. If she could, she'd be able to market it and make millions. She'd call it "Eu de Asshole."

She had to admit that she was feeling somewhat in better spirits. Certainly her loss had been daunting—she'd still shudder in mortification at the memory of it for a while—but it had served at least one useful purpose. She was now even _more_ driven to defeat the gym leader that had so unceremoniously handed her a defeat, no matter how tolerant of her inappropriate questioning he'd been afterwards.

Halfway out to the edge of the City she ran into Jason again. It looked as if he'd been training, too—Nija could tell by the hundreds of tiny paper-cut looking marks all over his arms and face. Wincing in empathy, Nija paused. "Bulbasaur miss target or something?"

"If only _that's_ what he was doing! I could handle a blind Pokemon that was too stupid to know the enemy from its own trainer, but this malicious streak has got to go!" he seemed to be just as fired up as she was, even if it was for a different reason. "He's driving me insane, Nija, I swear… say, you heading out to train?"

Nija nodded, and although Jason looked as though he'd been training all the live long day, he quickly asked if she would mind him tagging along for a quick spar. Nija smiled—the first real smile she'd had since her defeat at the hands of Armstrong—and nodded again. "Sure, no prob. We can swap horror stories, as well—I haven't had a remarkable day myself, either."

---------

The two had settled comfortably into seats in the Pokemon Center some time later, a rather intense training session under their respective belts. Nija had won her battle with Jason, but neither of them had really been surprised about that. Bulbasaur had been lax and difficult, doing whatever it wanted whenever it wanted, and Nija had had a type advantage anyway. After that the two had split off and, Nija thought, surely purged the entire perimeter of Pewter City of any Pokemon willing to attack passerby.

The two had filed back into the Center about an hour later and now Nija was just finishing up the tale of her remarkably dismal day and was sipping at a cup of cocoa in one hand while Jason expressed a number of emotions—empathy for her defeat, cheeky confidence that Charmander was only two or so levels away from a serious, ass-kicking new technique, and mild confusion and detached horror as to the circumstances surrounding Brock and his wife's deaths.

They were discussing that matter right now, and Jason was running off on a one-sided tangent, spinning strange ideas and speculations accompanied by more questions than Nija could even make up answers to.

"Wow. D'you think it was some kind of an accident? I hear that gym leaders get into a lot of those. Dangerous stuff. I respect gym leaders a ton, doing what they do even though they know they're always at a big risk. I know a lot of them, but still… some of them aren't too "right" in the head. I heard that Koga, from Fuchsia City went missing a long time ago, too. I wonder why Brock's death didn't make so much of the news? I mean, you and I both didn't know that he was gone till today. Koga's been in the tabloids for ages. I wonder if he's—you know, dead. That would be pretty awful… two of the first gym leaders like _ever_ dead."

Nija really had no opinions on the matter of his death, and didn't really want to speculate the possible causes of it one way or another. She'd always been highly sensitive to issues like that, as she wasn't at all sure if her own biological parents were still alive or not, although she rarely thought about it these days. There was simply too much to do.

Jason had shifted gears now and Nija settled gratefully into listening to his accounts of the depths of Bulbasaur's malicious streak.

"He pretended that there was some kind of Pokemon behind me and sent his vines shooting straight over my shoulder, right next to my ear! I thought he was going to break a hole open in the front of my face! And when I looked around there wasn't anything there and he had this oh-so-innocent look on his face like 'What? There was something there' and ARGH!" Jason cut himself off, shaking his head and frowning determinedly off into space. "I swear I'm going to get this guy to listen to orders, or my name isn't Jason Fremont!"

And there it was, clicking into place. Fremont. "Say, Jason," Nija started, scratching her head. "Do you have a brother or something?"

The effect this simple question had on him was astounding. His mug clattered down to the table and hot chocolate sloshed over one of his hands. He didn't appear to have noticed. "Why do you ask?" His sky blue eyes were wide and questioning, as if the answer to his query could change the fate of the planet.

"Ahh… because there was a blonde guy heading out to the Mart that said his name was Orion Fremont, and I just figured that since it's… not a very common… uh, name you two might be—?"

She didn't even bother finishing her thought as Jason had begun scrambling out of his seat at the word "figured," had gotten halfway to the door at "common" and was pushing through them and out into the 3:00 heat as she trailed off. "Wait up, dude!" she called, shooting out of her seat and calling after him. "He's probably not there be at Mount Moon already!"

She was certain she'd been loud enough to hear, but Jason made no sign of acknowledgment. It was hot outside, but Nija nevertheless followed him at a steady trot, not bothering to try to catch him. She'd just ask Jason what _that_ was all about in good time.

-------------------------------------

_The first Author's Note!_

_Okay, that chapter was WAY too long. I apologize for my ineptitude at planning my chapters in a way that will make them near the same length. I'm going to take this opportunity to clear up a few things I might have left fuzzy:_

_1) If the time it takes the characters to make it through forests or side paths or Route (insert any number here) seems strangely short, it's because this story is based largely off of the Red/Blue version games. While it would take Ash & Co. about three to four days to get through the Viridian forest, it takes the Gameboy player about thirty seconds, no? So, Kanto and Jhoto are a lot smaller in my story._

_2) Strange Gym leader pairings-- I didn't want to pair Brock with any OC's, so I'm going to leave his wife eternally nameless. Fill in the blanks with anybody from any version of Pokemon you like. I'm not a fan of the Surge + Sabrina pairing (I kind of thought WTH to myself when I thought up that circumstance for this fic, but it'll make a little more sense eventually). Obviously their marriage didn't work out, so... I don't really consider this a S+S fic, as they're blatantly not in love by any stretch of the imagination._

_3) The whole " is out of usable Pokemon! blacked/whited out!" Oh yeah, I had a LOT of trouble with this one. So I've come to this sad little conclusion: in this fic, when you battle an official (Gym leader, dojo master, Elite 4) and lose, one of their Pokemon is to escort or transport you back to the nearest Center and fend off the wild Pokemon from eating you, or something. If you're out in the woods and you get K.O'd from wild Weedle or something, a Chansey from the nearest Center is notified by a device that's built into the Pokeballs and is transported to your location totake you back home with it. Lame, yes, but I couldn't think of anything betterand I'm sticking to it: \_

_4) Team Rocket. Team Rocket is bad in my fic. Bad and dangerous and not particularly funny in any real way. No "blasting off" or Jesse/James here, I'm afraid!_

_I... THINK that's all for now. Of course, no one was asked to read this add-on, and it makes no real impact to the story whether it's read or not. I only hope that if anyone had questions regarding the above they were somewhat answered. Thankee mucho for wasting your time here!_

_Demon-with-the-stupid-little-1-added-to-the-end_


	22. Chapter 22 Jason

Chapter 22

Jason couldn't remember the last time he ran as quickly as he did just then. It had to have been years ago, because the feeling of simply _soaring_ over the ground, legs bounding huge steps and the wind positively _attacking_ his face was like a familiar old friend he hadn't seen in years. At one point, Jason had loved running and done it as much as he could every day, running laps around Sabrina's Pokemon Gym or even the Silph Co. building. Now, however, was different—Jason was running as if a Cerberus straight out of Hades was hot on his heels.

The instant the name "Orion," had been out of Nija's mouth Jason had known. How many other Orion Fremont's existed in the world, honestly? This one _had_ to be him. It _had_ to be.

His brother.

Jason rounded a corner and almost took out an old woman. Shouting "_Sorry!_" over his shoulder, he pushed on. Jesus, how long had it been since he'd last seen Orion? Six years? Seven?

Unlike most three and six-year-old brothers, he and Orion had gotten along fine. They were each other's sole playmates as both of their parents kept them cooped up indoors most of the time, although for entirely separate reasons. Surge hadn't liked his sons to piddle around with other kids when they should be training themselves and studying up on Electric Pokemon, and Sabrina hadn't wanted them to stray too far, for fear of abductions. That was his mother, though—she always looked at everything with a depressingly accurate amount of cynicism and distrust. She knew that the sons of _one_ gym leader would be ransomed for money or badges at the blink of an eye—but the sons of _two_ leaders? Jason and Orion could scarcely breathe without their mother standing over them protectively.

After Sabrina had left Vermillion with Jason in tow, he hadn't seen hide nor hair from his older brother. He often asked Sabrina when he'd be reunited with Orion, but all she could say was that she didn't know. It disturbed Jason—his magnificent, terrifyingly strong mother who could bend metal with her mind and tell when he was lying at the blink of an eye was powerless to gain legal custody over Orion.

The PokeMart emerged into view and Jason's heart leapt painfully into his throat. Before he knew what he was doing he was yelling like a maniac, the pounding of the pavement under his feet cutting his words into fragments.

"O—rion! Ori—on!" he shouted, screeching to a halt outside the doors and flinging them open. His fevered gaze tore over each face and turned head in the mart in under three seconds—no one in there was blonde. Turning a 180 and ripping out through the door as the clerk shouted something after him, Jason tore out into the center of a pathway and froze suddenly, whipping his head in random directions and twitching with the urgent need to be _moving._ The fact remained that he didn't know where he was going, though. Jason wasn't even sure how much time had passed since Nija had dropped the bomb on him, but he knew that if he didn't catch Orion before he got into Mount Moon it might take him _days_ to find his brother. Days were things Jason wouldn't stand for and couldn't afford. He _refused_ to let his brother slip from his grasp.

Each blistering second was widening the gap between he and his brother; a gap that had never been so small as it was today.

_Where is he?_ Jason thought to himself desperately, straining his fevered mind for an idea. _Okay… okay. If he's not here, he must have been checked into the Pokemon Center at one point or another, right? He had to have been. They'll know if he's still there or if he's checked out!_

He suddenly remembered which direction the Pokemon Center was in and shot off like a bat out of hell.

Jason beat down the dusty path even as he felt a sharp twinge in his side that soon escalated into an all-out burning fury of pain and stabbing. He felt his vision fogging slightly and ardently hoped enough oxygen was getting to his brain. If he passed out now, he might _never_ find Orion.

He knew that he would find him about three seconds before he actually did. The roaring of apprehension and excitement in his chest escalated to a cacophony of triumph even as Jason rounded a sharp corner and caught sight of a figure.

A boy standing near the entrance of the Pokemon Center, sipping a carryout drink that was steaming slightly, standing at a slouch and staring down at a sheaf of paper as if checking things off a list. A boy with flaxen blonde hair that was swept back and stuck out at the same odd angles Jason remembered so vividly form his childhood. A boy with pale skin and a nose and chin and mouth identical to his own.

Tiredness was forgotten.

"_Orion!_"

Jason positively _threw_ himself at the boy's back, which caused the other to jump terribly and nearly spill his entire drink on the floor. He felt Orion's head snap around to try to get a glance at his attacker and laughed as his brother got a face full of green and blonde hair instead.

"J-_Jason?_" he exclaimed, staggering backward and hitting the side of the Center.

"Orion! Is it really you? Of course it's you," he shouted, pulling back and examining his captive. "You still have the same fruity hair!"

Orion grinned widely and pushed at Jason's forehead. "I see you've dyed yours flaming-green," he commented, and Jason wondered vaguely if someone's face could break permanently from smiling too much. If that was the case, he and Orion were doomed.

It was only then that Jason noticed the girl peering at the two of them warily. She looked to be about Orion's age and appeared to be the exact same height as Jason himself. Her piercing gray eyes seemed to take in all of his features and reach the obvious conclusion: "You're Orion's long-lost brother, then?"

"Ahh—you could say that, yeah," Jason said, grinning sheepishly and rubbing the back of his neck. "You and he friends? Cause any friend of 'Rion's is a friend of mine!" Hyped up on his triumph, Jason didn't hesitate to pull the girl into a one-armed embrace while he still had his other hand clasped onto Orion's shoulder, pulling the three of them into an uncomfortable group hug. The girl stiffened and pulled away slowly, in a way that made it obvious that she didn't want to be rude.

"Oh, jeez, how rude of me," Orion said, clearing his throat and presenting the girl to Jason. "Jason, this is my friend, Azrael," he turned and presented Jason in the same manner. "And Azrael, this is my kid brother, Jason."

"Aw, _jeez_, man, you make me sound like I'm an infant or something!" Jason laughed, but shook his head and sobered up remarkably fast. "Dude, what's been going _on_ with you in the past—I dunno, _forever_? We got a lot to catch up on my man!"

"That we do," Orion said, eyes nearly shut from the magnitude of his smile. "Azrael, would you mind terribly if Jason and I took a walk for a bit? You can head back into town with us and chill at the café if you like, so you don't have to be here alone."

"That's alright," Azrael said, smiling with something a lot like sadness in her calm countenance. "I might do some training with Eevee out here. I'll be here when you get back."

At that precise moment, Nija tromped up to them from around the corner of the building. Orion jumped maybe two feet in the air and spun around in mid-descent, seeming ready for an ambush or natural disaster. Jason wondered why his brother was so twitchy and burst out laughing at the sheer state of disarray that seemed to have befallen Nija. Her normally messy hair looked as if a tornado had swept through it, and her face was smeared with streaks of dirt.

"Jason Fremont," she said slowly and menacingly. "I am going to _kill_ you."

"What'd I do?" Jason managed to force out through waves of laughter. "And what the heck happened to _you?_"

"Well, I was trying to follow _you_ down the God-forsaken pathway to Mount Moon and ended up walking through a _nest of Beedrills!_ And now you're right here in front of the Pokemon Center! Why the heck did you run off so damn fast—oh." Nija seemed to catch sight of Jason's companions and scratched her head. "So you two _are_ related."

"Ahh—oh, hey," Orion said, as he seemed to have recovered his wits. "You're that girl from this morning. You know Jason?" When Nija nodded once, dumfounded, Orion chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. "Small world."

"Microscopic," Jason said, pulling on Orion's arm. "C'mon man, let's grab a drink or something!"

"Jason, really, you're notoriously rude!" Orion griped at him good-naturedly, and motioned to Nija. "What about your friend here?"

"Her fault for getting lost." Jason said, sticking his tongue out at Nija who did the same. The childish exchange seemed to be too much for Orion, for he started laughing again and appeared unable to stop.

"Well, I'll stay here with—with Azrael, was it?—while you two go have your boy talk," Nija said, rolling her eyes and blowing a strand of scruffy black hair out of her face. "Brother bonding and all that. Really, you guys act like you haven't spoken in—"

"Six years?" Jason supplied, and Nija's eyebrows shot up into her bangs.

Orion, from beside him, added in, "Actually, it's closer to seven."

"Always the accountant!" Jason quipped. "But you're right. Nija, you and Azrael want to like, go into town or something?"

Azrael spoke up for the first time in a while. "I feel like I'm living through one big spell of déjà vu. I'm fine with staying out here. You all do whatever you feel like doing." It wasn't said in a mean way, but the remaining three could tell immediately that Azrael was uncomfortable in the emotionally intense situation.

"If you say so," Orion said, looking at her with some concern. "We won't be long—" he winced. "And I'm not supposed to hold you up, either… dang."

Azrael smiled wanly. "Don't worry about that. A promise is a promise—I said we'd travel together, and I don't go back on my word. I mean, you're not going to stay out all night until six tomorrow morning, right?"

Orion's face split into a grateful smile. "Of course not. You're the best," he said, and then, turning to Jason, straightened up and beamed. "So, shall we be on our way?"

"Huzzah!" Jason cried, punching the air with a fist. "See ya, ladies!"

Nija rolled her eyes at him again and waved him off with one dirt-smeared hand. "See ya, ya twat."

---------

Jason and Orion had decided to hit the café where Orion had gotten his coffee—that had been the steaming substance that Jason had successfully robbed him of earlier—and pulled up two barstools to the edge of the table. Orion ordered another cup of decaf and Jason ordered a chocolate shake. Orion grinned ear to ear and mentioned that he remembered that chocolate had always been Jason's favorite flavor, then proceeded to order vanilla coffee creamer just to egg him on. Jason had whapped his brother fondly on the head and said that vanilla was for wussies. Orion had retorted by stating that chocolate was for women, to which Jason had "oooh"ed and conceded defeat.

They sat in silence for a bit, sipping their beverages, enjoying each other's company too much to tarnish it with intense and unpleasant conversation so soon. Jason knew that Orion's story wouldn't be a nice one—and knew that his retellings of life with Sabrina would probably cause no small deal of lamentation. It was no contest at all who was a better parent between their mother and father—and it was just Orion's luck that he'd gotten the short end of the stick. Jason silently hoped that Surge hadn't put Orion through _too_ much crap over the last six-seven years.

Struck with the sudden realization that his brother was actually outside in public _without_ Lt. Surge, Jason opened his mouth to ask him if he was here on his own at the precise moment Orion began a question of his own. They simultaneously cut themselves off, urged that the other go first, then laughed. A pretty young waitress smiled warmly at them as she refilled Jason's half-drunk water glass and topped off the few sips Orion had taken from his.

By unspoken agreement, Orion asked his question first. "I take it you're on your journey, now?"

Jason beamed. "Yup. Got my starter and my first catch and everything. All I'm missing is my first badge."

Orion smiled, lifting a pale eyebrow in interest. "Well, this is certainly the perfect place, no?"

Jason nodded solemnly. I meant to head over there today actually, but, well," Jason didn't have to finish his thought. Orion clearly took top priority in his list.

His brother smiled at him, crinkling the corners of his eyes as he did so and Jason could suddenly picture Orion as an old man in a rocking chair with enormous rivets etched out from the sides of his eyes from smiling too much in that manner. "Well, there's no reason we can't head down there still… the only thing I'm concerned about is Azrael and Nija."

"Nija wants to get a boulder badge, too," Jason commented offhandedly, and suddenly was gripped with a thought that he hadn't had before. "So, is Azrael your _girlfriend?_" he jabbed, poking Orion in the side and grinning as his brother squirmed out of range of his attacks.

Laughing, the taller rolled his eyes. "No, she's not. Just a friend I met along the way."

"But you'd like her to be, I bet!" Jason was all grins now, leaning over his mug of cocoa. Orion then accused him of liking Nija, to which Jason allowed himself a theatric display of shudders and convulsions. "Aw, man, no way. She's like my—my _sister_ or something now."

"You two _are_ an awful lot alike, from what I can tell," Orion agreed, sipping his coffee thoughtfully. "Do you plan on traveling together long?"

Jason shrugged. "Well, I guess so. We never really decided on it, I just met her in the Pokemon Center in Viridian and we were both headed out to the forest soon anyway so we decided to stick together and—well, we never really got around to un-sticking." Orion snorted into his drink and Jason kneed him in the leg, which caused Orion to reach over and mercilessly attack Jason's spikes. Scrambling out of the way and assessing the damage to his hair Jason shot his brother a venomous look which melted away almost instantly into more laughter on both the brother's parts. They had been making a spectacle of themselves in the café for a while and finally decided to pay their tabs and go.

"Dude, we have so much to catch up on," Jason was saying as they sat outside the café on wrought-iron benches. "I could spend weeks recapping the stuff that's been going on back home, and I'm pretty sure you could do the same—unless you're just as boring as ever," he sniped in good humor, jabbing his brother in the ribs through his long-sleeved white shirt.

Orion crinkled his eyes at him again and elbowing the hand away, said, "You're right—we have a lot of catching up to do… and I wouldn't have a problem with just loitering around and doing nothing _but_ that for a while, but…"

Jason frowned, not sure what was bothering Orion about this seemingly fine plan.

"But what about the girls?" Orion questioned, brow furrowed in a manner better suited for someone twice his age. "I don't want to inconvenience them any."

Jason sighed and ran a hand across his spikes absent mindedly before realizing that by doing so he would mess them up. It was just like Orion to be so freakin' responsible all the time. Dropping his arm to his side, he began, "Well, the only reason Nija and I are even here is to beat the gym leader… after that I don't think we need to stick around here."

Orion nodded, face taking on a contemplative air. "How ready are you for said gym leader?"

Jason blinked at him, obviously confused. "I guess I'm ready enough with Bulbasaur… that is, if the stupid guy decides to obey me." Jason rolled his eyes up into his skull at the memory of his incorrigible Pokemon and the disastrous training session they'd had earlier in the day. "Why?"

"No reason! What say we go back and inform Nija and Azrael that we'll be making a stop to the gym today?"

Jason had opened his mouth to say something, although he suddenly couldn't remember exactly what it had been. "You—what?"

Orion laughed, clapping Jason on the back and giving him a shove off in the direction of the Pokemon Center. "If you and Nija make good time with getting your badges we can all head off to Mount Moon together!" He put on a grave face that only barely hid the beginnings of a grin. "I wouldn't _dream_ of letting my baby brother go through the big, scary cave all by himself…"

"Hey!"

Things were looking pretty good so far, Jason mused to himself as he socked Orion in the shoulder. The two brothers laughed and began to trot their way back to the two girls that waited for them outside the Center.


	23. Chapter 23 Azrael

Chapter 23

From somewhere beside her, the girl, Nija, coughed into her hand. It appeared that she was the type who felt awkward if a lack of conversation stretched on too long. Azrael, on the other hand, had no problem with sitting in silence.

The state of the girl's hair was abysmal. Random twigs and leaves jutted out at odd angles, and an angry looking snarl was tangling itself at the back of her neck. Azrael couldn't believe that the girl honestly lived in such a state of disarray. It looked as if she'd never bothered to pull a comb through the mass in her life.

"Would you like me to comb out your hair for you?" she asked mildly as Nija turned to face her. "You've got sticks and leaves stuck in it."

"Ah—if you want to," she said, blinking and pulling some of the greenery out of it with one hand. "I warn you though, it's been responsible for many a death." She added solemnly.

"I'm sure I'll manage," Azrael said as she rummaged in her backpack for a brush. Locating it, she motioned for Nija to sit on a nearby bench and set to work. Extracting the foreign objects was easy enough, but the tangles were killer. Azrael's mind began to wander as she smoothed out the very bottoms first and slowly worked her way up. She often brushed out her mother's hair at home, even though it was quite short and thin now. Something about combing out hair was very relaxing to her.

_Speaking of which,_ Azrael thought to herself. _I should write home to Mom._

A few moments later Azrael had successfully detangled Nija's damaged hair and had unconsciously began twisting it into a braid. When she was done she snapped one of the six hair bands around her wrist to the end of the woven locks and said, "Okay, all done."

Nija turned her head one way and then the other. "Whoa," she said, blinking and reaching back to grab at the braid. "It feels so cool."

Azrael smiled slightly. "It keeps your hair untangled, too." She felt suddenly extremely girly and moved to get out her stationary from her bag. While she was waiting for Orion and Jason to return she figured she might as well get that letter home out of the way. Settling down on Nija's abandoned bench—the younger girl was now immersed with playing with her braid—she set her notepad on her knee, and, pausing a moment to think, touched the tip of her felt pen to the pages and began to write.

_Dear Mom,_

What a wonderful start, Azrael thought to herself blandly. Shrugging it off, she continued.

_How have you been doing? I'm writing to let you know I haven't blown myself up or gotten hopelessly lost in a forest somewhere. The Pokemon are doing fine, and I'm about ready to leave Pewter City to go to Cerulean. I won't be able to write for a few days while I cross through Mount Moon, but I'll send you off a word as soon as I get out of there and into Cerulean._

Azrael sincerely hoped her mother wouldn't freak out and assume the worst if her daughter was a bit late with her next response. Nija appeared to have gotten over the wonder of her own hair and was now out training her Pokemon by the outskirts of the forested patches nearby. The blazes of fire, gusts of wind and sudden rustlings of attacks and Pokemon cries was a bit distracting, but Azrael had long since learned to tune out things she didn't want to hear. She continued, scrawling her loopy cursive down to the middle of the page and pausing.

_Actually I met up with a few people my own age around here._ _The first guy I met is Orion—he's a sweet guy, if a bit clumsy. He refused to let me go through Mount Moon alone, so he and I will be traveling together for a spell._

Azrael knew that this news would put her mother's mind to ease at least a little.

_And just about three seconds ago Orion's long-lost brother, Jason, and his friend, a girl named Nija, showed up. I'm not sure how this will affect our travel plans, but I'm willing to deal with whatever comes up. Not much else is going on right now, so I'll end this letter on that note. Take care, and I'll see you in a few months._

_Love you,_

_Azrael_

Azrael surveyed her letter over one more time for grammatical errors and folded it up into thirds. She let out Murkrow and removed her Town Map from her bag. The little black bird ruffled its feathers and observed her with keen interest as she fastened the letter to its right leg. She pointed at where they were right now, motioning around to the forest around them, and dragged her finger from that point back to the house she'd marked in red.

"Take that to Mom," she said, closing her fist near her chest and pushing it out from her while spreading her fingers. Murkrow took a second to comprehend the order and took to the skies, kicking up a flurry of dirt and dust in Azrael's eyes.

Wiping the stuff from her face, Azrael idly wondered if that's what the Sand Attack felt like.

Nija seemed to have finished beating the tar out of a wild Pokemon and returned to the clearing. Trailing her were three Pokemon of various types—a Charmander, its orange flame tail swishing back and forth, a Pidgey, flying up to a branch to preen its brown and creamy-white feathers, and a small violet-blue rodent, Nidoran of the female type, scuttling alongside her sneakered feet. Nija moved to sit down next to Azrael, then seemed to change her mind and glanced up towards the imposing form of Mount Moon in the distance. Mount Moon was hard to miss—it was only the second largest mountain on all of Kanto, even giving the Indigo Plateau a run for its money.

"Dang," the girl muttered, shaking her head at the shape. "It's gonna be pretty dark in there. You think you'll be able to _see_ much?"

"We shouldn't have too much of a problem," Azrael said without looking up. "Some light comes in from the center of the place. At night we'll have to stop, though."

"Yeah, definitely—" Nija paused suddenly, and Azrael looked up.

"Something wrong?"

"Well, it's just… you and Orion were going to leave tomorrow?"

Azrael nodded slowly. "That was the plan, anyway."

"Ah…" Nija paused again and tried to rake a hand through her hair, obviously forgetting that it was held back in its braid and getting her hand trapped. Pulling it free, she tried again. "Well, I just wonder if Jason'll want to go with you guys and all, since he and Orion obviously haven't seen each other in forever."

"That would make sense," Azrael said, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Unfortunately it _did_ make a whole lot of sense. Azrael was nowhere _near_ looking forward to what could very well become an enormous group outing. One person alongside her wasn't too bad—but three? Well, that was an entirely different matter altogether.

And yet, she'd promised Orion that he could see her through the cave, and she wasn't normally one to renege on her pledges. She knew that whatever the blond boy decided, she would have to abide by… she just hoped that he would be decent enough to decide something that wasn't _too_ inconvenient for her.

Even the second after she'd had the thought she dismissed it. The idea of Orion doing _anything_ inconsiderate at _all _was laughable. She'd only known the guy for two days and already she had a clearer judgment on him, a truer sense of his character than she would get from most people in a lifetime. The boy just exuded sincerity, which Azrael appreciated.

There was that bloody word again. _Appreciate._ A smile came to her lips as she wondered if there was a chronic illness of that sort, _appreciatitis_ or something similar.

Azrael supposed that a decent chunk of time had elapsed, and sure enough she could make out the form of the two returning blondes in the distance. Nija hopped down and sat on the bench beside her, kicking her feet in the dusty floor a bit and stopping when she realized that the dust would be floating in the general direction of her sitting companion.

The two boys came into clearer focus, both of them walking along briskly and beaming at them. "Hey, Nija!" Jason called quickly to her, dashing the last few yards. "We're gonna go battle the gym leader! You're gonna do it, right?"

Nija seemed at a loss for words. "Well, _yeah_, I mean, I was planning on it, but… isn't it kind of…?"

"We gotta get it done today so we can get out of here tomorrow," Jason said, and at Orion's fierce elbow to his ribs, hissed out an "ow, what?" and visibly paled under his older brother's glare. "Um… right. Please won't you do this for me, Nija? It's been ages since I've seen Orion and all, and I kinda hoped we could all go to Mount Moon together, and I really, _really_ want us to all stick together for a while… _pleeease_?"

He'd turned on the puppy eyes, and Nija squirmed uncomfortably under the scrutiny. Orion slapped a hand to his own forehead and dragged it down over his face. Apparently that hadn't been the desired effect he'd wanted to have on his brother.

"Oh, right," muttered the girl under her breath. "No pressure, then…" But she seemed quite all right with it on whole.

Jason seemed completely unaware of the girl's last statement. Either that, or he was choosing to ignore it. "All right! Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go kick some ass!"

Orion rolled his eyes and gave Azrael a wincing, deeply apologetic look. She smiled back to reassure him that she wasn't going to snap and go on a killing spree due to the detour. "It's going on five o'clock… we'd better do this quick so we can rest up for the journey tomorrow."

---------

A dark figure, Armstrong, Azrael assumed, glanced up as the gym doors opened, allowing the four kids to enter the gym. The lights were all off, which Azrael found odd, but Nija walked calmly over to a deceptively normal looking rock, and, after opening said rock, proceeded to flip a series of switches that quickly bathed the gym in light. Azrael stared at the shorter girl, bewildered, before Armstrong laughed aloud and said, "You remember that, I see."

_Oh,_ Azrael thought to herself offhandedly. _She must have been in here earlier._

"Yeah," Nija said, shifting somewhat uncomfortably and observing the dirt on her sneakers. Jason shuffled over to her and whispered something to her, at which Nija quickly backed away and sat down near the opposing wall.

"You sure?" he called, and Nija nodded vehemently, turning away and twisting a lock of hair that had somehow escaped the braid around her finger. Jason shrugged. "All right then, if you don't want to… I'd like to challenge you first, sir!"

Armstrong looked mildly surprised, before laughing. "Sure, son. No problem. One on one, two on two…?"

Jason frowned. "Er, one-on-one, I guess. I've got a level twelve B—"

Armstrong lifted his large hands to silence the boy. "No need to tell me what kind it is. Just needed to know the level." And with that the man sauntered off to the opposite end of the gym and began rifling in what Azrael could have _sworn_ was an old shoebox for Pokeballs. Dismissing the idea, she turned to regard Orion.

"I take it this is Mr. Armstrong, Brock's replacement?" she muttered under her breath as Jason moved forward to stand somewhat awkwardly at the opposing side of the battlefield.

"I guess so," Orion said, brow furrowing slightly. "I've never been here before."

"You ready, son?" called Armstrong from some distance away, his voice echoing in the largely empty space.

"Yeah," Jason called, and Azrael winced at the slight squeak in his tone. Jason cleared his throat and, in a much deeper tone, repeated, "Yeah, I'm ready when you are."

"Alright then," Armstrong bellowed, and a beam of red light flashed out from the center of his Pokeball a split second before Jason jammed the button on his.

The shape of Armstrong's Pokemon was absolutely _enormous._ Azrael cringed for the second time in thirty seconds as the form of a young Onix materialized, lifting its shining head from the ground and regarding Jason's pathetically small by comparison Bulbasaur.

Jason's Pokemon glanced back at its trainer, red eyes wide with a look that unmistakably said, "What are you, _insane?_" Jason pointed ahead at the opponent and muttered quietly, "Dude, you'd better listen to me, just this once, okay?"

"Alright, Onix," Armstrong was beginning. "Let's try a little Screech attack!"

Onix straightened up even more, uncoiling its massive neck and emitted what Azrael was _sure_ a noise to wake the dead. Clapping her hands fiercely over her ears, and catching Orion and Nija doing the same beside her, she fought inwardly to steel her mind off from the ear-shattering shrill. Bulbasaur staggered on the spot, burying its head under its front legs and shuddering as Jason lowered his head much in the same fashion. It seemed like eons before the sound ceased.

Amazingly, Armstrong hadn't covered his ears once throughout this ordeal. In fact, the man seemed downright bored. "Your turn, lad."

Jason was swaying on the spot, and Azrael's ears were still ringing as he said, "Right… Bulbasaur, Leech Seed him!"

Azrael regarded Jason with a new sense of interest. That was a remarkably good first move. Bulbasaur, however, seemed to think otherwise. It turned to glare at Jason over one leafy shoulder and proceeded to the beginnings of a Vine Whip attack. Jason shouted out, "NO!" just as Armstrong had begun to laugh at the obvious display of disobedience, but halfway through the attack the Leaf Pokemon appeared to abruptly change its mind, and out from its leafy back exploded a multitude of small, sticky-looking brown seeds. They were projected out of Bulbasaur like mini-rockets, most missing target but a select few glomming onto Onix like spitballs and sticking there. Almost instantly, small, neon-green vines erupted from then and began to wind their way all around the rock snake's body, one tangling itself in the long spine protruding from its head and leaning down to drape over its left eye. Onix now looked like an old Victorian house covered in ivy. It was almost laughable, but for the fact that it was now Armstrong's turn.

"Alright, Onix. Use your bide attack."

Azrael's heart sank even as Jason's face split open into a wide grin. This was _not_ good. Unless Jason could sufficiently weaken Onix to the point of fainting in three turns, that one order meant that the battle was already over. Jason, however, seemed to take it as a perfect opportunity to attack without worrying about the possibility of counter.

"Okay, Bulbasaur!" he shouted as Onix coiled itself up and regarded the smaller Pokemon before it with steady, dark eyes. "_Now_ you can use your freakin' vine whip!"

Bulbasaur seemed to be struggling to find something wrong with this attack suggestion, but, finding nothing, grudgingly shot out its vines, blistering them over Onix's flank with sharp, cracking explosions of sound like fireworks going off in a contained area. The effect was good enough, but not nearly close to taking out a third of Onix's health. Azrael gritted her teeth, feeling like a drunk in a bar watching as her favorite team threw away the playoffs on one of those TV's fixed the top of the wall.

Onix's gaze only seemed to intensify as the leech seed glowed all over its body and transferred floating bits of effervescent pollen over to Bulbasaur, who was now looking wary.

"Um, Razor Leaf!" Jason called even as Bulbasaur was executing the technique. Jason seemed daunted for a moment before pretending that his Pokemon had obeyed his command—on the contrary it appeared as though Bulbasaur hadn't waited for the order at all and was even now taking the battle into its own hands.

Razor leaf, to Azrael's delight, had a _much_ better effect on the enormous Rock type. It appeared to be weakening considerably, although she couldn't tell much as it was curled tightly in upon itself and resting at the moment. She thought, however, that she had seen a cringe of pain as one of the leaves struck near its open eye. The leech seed glowed again, and Azrael felt frustrated watching as the perfectly good healing pollen met with Bulbasaur's already full-health body.

Bulbasaur seemed to enjoy the success of the Razor Leaf attack, and shot it out again, for the third—and final—round of Onix's complacent Bide technique. Azrael cringed as she thought of what was coming next.

As Onix unraveled itself, Azrael found that Jason's persistent attacks had indeed wrought a fair amount of damage on the creature—it was looking tired and very scuffed up, but all of that seemed to vanish in comparison to the fierce look of power that overcame its features as it leveled itself off to attack.

Now Jason appeared worried, though not _nearly_ as much as Bulbasaur did. Onix shot forward without warning, releasing a burning torrent of red and gold as it did so, glancing off Bulbasaur in a way that had the small Pokemon flying backwards into Jason. Far more than three quarters of its health depleted, Bulbasaur seemed to be struggling to its feet on sheer will power alone as Jason picked himself up from the ground and Onix returned to its place near Armstrong. Azrael was astounded that the Pokemon hadn't fainted from that onslaught.

Jason was feeding Bulbasaur a Potion, and even as the Bulbasaur grazed his arm with a randomly fired Razor Leaf it was also getting an extra boost from the healing pollen. Azrael felt as though she'd gotten whiplash from Bulbasaur's fluctuating health status as the Pokemon returned to nearly-top shape.

Armstrong looked nonplussed. "Luck, pure luck," he seemed to be grumbling to himself under his breath before he gave the order of "Body Slam!"

Onix blocked out the lights of the Gym overhead as Azrael instinctively backed many hasty steps away. The Rock type seemed to hover in the air for a few moments before going down—with a crash that resounded all through the building and shook the foundation of it, rattling the long-suffering metal balconies and crumbling some of the intricate rock formations—right across Bulbasaur.

Azrael's stomach churned sickly. If it weren't for the Gym's floors, that were designed to give slightly under concentrated points of sudden weight, she was sure that Jason's Pokemon would be no more than a smear across the pavement. As it were, Onix pulled itself off of him slowly and she was granted the sight of Bulbasaur in a very painful-looking pit of dirt, sand and stone. It looked down for the count.

Armstrong looked confident, and for a moment Azrael thought that the match was over. Bulbasaur was twitching, however, and at this Jason seemed to snap out of his reverie, rushing over and extracting another potion bottle from his pack even as Onix was sapped by the Leech Seed again.

It happened very fast. Azrael thought for a moment that Bulbasaur was attacking Onix again without Jason's permission—hundreds of leaves were searing through the air suddenly. It took her a moment to realize that most of them were aimed at Jason himself. The blond boy was struggling to reach his Pokemon nonetheless, batting irritably at the small leaves that nicked his arms and legs. Finally crouching by Bulbasaur and practically shoving the bottle down its throat, Azrael could make out the words, "ungrateful" and "brat." The leaves gradually subsided, and as they did she could sense a change in the words, the mutterings going from indignant to encouraging, as a cheeky grin broke out onto Jason's face. The bottle was empty, and he gingerly lifted Bulbasaur out of its dirty trench, placing it on its feet some meters away. "You're doing great," he said louder. "You feeling alright enough to continue, though? I can forfeit any time."

Orion beside her gave a small start. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and studied his expression of impressed shock. Apparently surrendering wasn't normally in Jason's forte. Azrael couldn't really blame the boy, though—if she had to chose between seriously injuring her team and selfishly winning a trophy for herself or keeping one of her oldest friends happy and intact, it was no tossup which one she'd chose. Then again, Azrael wasn't as focused on her Pokemon journey as she was on her _other_ mission… Jason, however, seemed to surround his very world on becoming a great trainer. To him, it would indeed be a sacrifice to bow out this close to a victory.

Bulbasaur seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Orion. He was glaring at Jason out of one angry red eye as if asking him incredulously, _You're kidding me, right?_ After the trainer and Pokemon had a stare down, Jason repeated, very slowly, "I can forfeit any time. Dead serious."

A very subtle change seemed to come over Bulbasaur's face. The red eyes lost some of their ferocity, and Azrael could have sworn he was analyzing Jason very closely. Then, at last, he snorted and faced forward, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust with a back leg and staring intently ahead, waiting for an order.

Jason looked as if he would faint. He even put a hand to his chest as though he were feeling weak with shock. "You're going to _listen_ to me?" Bulbasaur caught the sarcasm and the red-eyed glare was back. "Oh, wow. Stop the presses! This is a day to live on in history!"

"Are you ever going to attack?" Armstrong interrupted, bored, twirling one stubby finger in his brown beard. "I don't have all night."

Jason and Bulbasaur snapped out of their theatrics. "Right!" Jason called happily, seeming to regain every ounce of his pazzaz. "You know what to do, buddy!" he called to Bulbasaur, surrendering his newfound power as a trainer to his Pokemon.

If Bulbasaur was surprised by this sudden end of attack dictation, he didn't show it. And, as what looked like _thousands_ of large, shining, razor-edged leaves shot out of Bulbasaur's seed in a frenzied flurry, Azrael also realized that the baby leaves Bulbasaur had used on Jason had been a mere fraction of its true abilities. Onix, already weak from the seed and the endurance of the bide attack, went down in a glory of what looked like green confetti, striking the ground almost harder than during Body Slam. The sound was deafening, and Azrael swore she saw a few bolts rain down from the rusty-looking balcony.

There was a moment of silence as the leaves lost momentum and fluttered uselessly to the floor and the enormous cloud of dust settled around the gym and the trainers both on it and witnessing it. After what seemed like an indetermined amount of silence, Armstrong gruffed out a "Good job, lad," and recalled Onix quite suddenly in a flash of red. The sudden absence of the rock snake on the gym seemed to finally spur Jason into action, and he lifted a hand shakily to brush his bangs from his face.

"I… what?" he inquired unintelligently as Bulbasaur crowed in satisfied triumph, sending a shower of pollen up into the air. The glittering stuff floated down around them and Jason finally seemed to comprehend his victory. Armstrong was walking over to him, making slow progress across the gym floor. "I… won?" Jason inquired, and the heavyset man nodded, looking terribly amused as he shoved a hand in the pocket of his vest and extracted a small badge to prove it. "I won." The words were heavy and dense, like two stones falling through water. Expressionless, he held out his hand as the badge was deposited in it, and he stared even _longer_ before a twitch began at the corner of his mouth and rapidly spread over his entire face into a manic sort of grin.

"I _won!_"

Orion and Nija were already making their ways across the floor to him, and Jason was running for Bulbasaur, scooping him up and tossing him up in the air. This didn't agree with the Pokemon, who shot out twin vines to latch onto Jason's arms in shock. Jason caught him again and was greeted by his brother and his friend. A three-way hug (or, four-way, as Bulbasaur was trapped in the embrace) ensued, and Azrael couldn't bring herself to join, but couldn't stop herself from grinning.

Armstrong seemed to be chuckling too as he rifled around in the grubby shoebox (for there was now no doubt in Azrael's mind as to what it was). Jason's euphoria was contagious, and Nija was soon engaged in an odd little dance with him while Orion clapped his hands in time to some unknown song. Azrael's smile turned into a laugh.

They carried on like that for a while, until it became very apparent to them all that Armstrong was waiting. Jason couldn't seem to sit still even as he made his way to the sidelines, toying with his new prize.

Nija was now up to bat, and Azrael noticed with no small pang of empathy, just how unconfident the girl looked. "Same old?" Armstrong called, as if they made it a practice to have Pokemon battles every day after watching the game. He was rifling through the shoebox again.

"Yeah," Nija said, barely above a mutter, and Armstrong, who hadn't heard her over the clattering of metal on metal, grunted "Eh?" before Nija reiterated her response, louder.

As the two prepared to face off, Azrael caught Orion and Jason muttering happily to themselves and observing Jason's new badge with shared pride. A pang of longing jolted through Azrael's middle as she forced herself to look away. What she wouldn't give to be there when Blake started out on his journey and won his first badge…

Struggling to keep her mind focused on watching the match, Azrael noticed that Armstrong had selected a Geodude and Nija had Charmander out at her side already. Charmander looked particularly fierce, and Nija had a strange, unreadable expression on her face as she regarded the bi-limbed boulder, one that was hovering between shame and indignation. Armstrong laughed, seeming to correctly interpret her look.

"I'm not going easy on you, I assure you. Geodude's a few levels tougher than the Onix your friend here just fought."

This seemed to settle Nija's dark look of anger, and she nodded sheepishly, as if to deny that she had been thinking just that. "Ready," she said, before Armstrong had asked. He chuckled again, as if deeply amused by her.

"Alright then! Geodude, tackle!"

The Rock type sailed through the air at Charmander, who dived out of the way, avoiding most of the damage but getting clipped on its hindquarters. Staggering a little from the blow before righting itself, Charmander hissed fiercely at Geodude, who was picking itself up and returning to its fixed spot on Armstrong's end of the gym.

"Not bad," he said, nodding. "Your Pokemon's gotten better already."

"Ember!" Nija shouted, seeming too worked up to carry on a friendly conversation with her opponent. Jason let out a sharp breath beside her, and Azrael realized that he hadn't known of this technique.

Surely enough, not a nanosecond later he murmured, "_That's_ new!" but before he could say more, Charmander was in action.

Charmander's new Ember attack exploded from the impossibly small Pokemon, showering Geodude with sparks and chars and small flames of smoldering intensity, a fray of heat that had Nija wiping sweat from her brow, the heat scorching a nearby rock and causing mirage-like ripples to waver through the air around them. Azrael squinted her eyes and struggled to see through the shimmering air to Geodude's current state.

Much to her surprise, the Ember attack had had a pretty good affect. The Rock type was looking a bit worse for wear, scuffed and burned around the edges and sporting a very large, charred black spot across its left arm. It appeared to be wincing, as if in a considerable amount of pain.

"It looks like it's been burned," Orion muttered to Azrael just as she came to the conclusion herself. "That's good for Nija! Hopefully with it losing a little more HP with each passing turn this won't be so difficult."

Azrael nodded absently, but her eyes were fixed securely on Nija's face. The younger girl didn't seem to be as happy and relieved as Orion was—in fact, she was looking rather pale and wasn't taking this as a sign to relax in the slightest. This brought a slight smile to Azrael's face—she respected the fact that Nija wasn't overestimating her luck or underestimating her opponent.

Armstrong was speaking. "Alright, Geodude. Let's finish this—Body Slam!"

Azrael winced and fought not to look away as the boulder Pokemon jetted forward and landed with a sickening _thud_ across Charmander's flank. Nija uttered a strangled sound of dismay and frustration, rifling in her pack for a potion bottle. Once Geodude had removed itself from Charmander and the scuffed-up dent it had made in the gym floor, it staggered in mid-air. It certainly _looked_ as though Geodude had tripped on absolutely nothing, and Azrael knew it was the burn acting up. She wasn't much good with Rock types, but she thought that it should be at about a two-thirds of its health by now.

Charmander, on the other hand—well, it didn't take a PokeManiac to see that Charmander was barely clinging to consciousness. This was what was known as Death Row to most trainers—the Potion-wasting, torturous last rounds of a mismatched battle, where the losing trainer spent all their turns providing healing items to a Pokemon only to have that Pokemon shot down to within the red zone the very next turn. Death Row ended one of two ways—when the Pokemon's trainer ran out of Potion or decided to just give up—or when a surprising turn of the tables occurred, which was rarely.

Nija got up from a still woozy but mostly healed up Charmander and regarded Armstrong evenly, but with no small amount of dread on her face. Armstrong was, however, regarding Geodude. Azrael wondered if the man bothered to carry extra burn heals on his person. If he did, he should be using one now, because each passing moment Geodude was looking more and more disgruntled and distracted by its charred arm. Armstrong returned his attentions to Nija and Charmander and said, "How's about a Tackle Attack, Geodude!"

Geodude shot forward with a determination; Charmander poised to leap out of the way—and amazingly, Geodude stumbled yet _again_ and went down on the ground a few mere inches from the orange lizard. It had missed.

Nija appeared to breathe again while Armstrong fumed. "All right, get over here you!" he barked to Geodude, who obediently hovered over to the stocky man. Armstrong fished around in one of the pockets of his enormous cargo pants and removed what appeared to be a dusty, slightly-cracked, half-empty bottle of Burn Heal. Azrael felt like slapping herself on the forehead. So he _had_ had a Burn Heal and had merely decided that it wasn't worth it to take precautions with his Pokemon battle? _How entirely arrogant_, she thought to herself, liking the replacement-Brock less and less.

It was Nija's turn now, and predictably the girl called out the order of "Ember!" again. Azrael wasn't expecting it to sustain a damaging, health-depleting status effect on Geodude yet again—that would have indeed, been too much to ask for. However, this second burn seemed to cause the Rock type considerably more damage than it had initially, probably because the other Pokemon was weakening. Azrael's eyebrows lifted as she roughly calculated a third of Geodude's health remaining. Judging by the way it was hovering in midair, sort of dazed and confused looking, Nija actually had a fighting chance to turn this battle in her favor.

The second she thought it Azrael wanted to take it back, feeling as though she'd jinxed the match. Geodude's Tackle attack met target this time, and Charmander was sent positively _flying_ through the air, to land on its back with a sickening _crack_ against a brittle looking rock that began to crack and crumble from the impact of the Fire type against it. Nija swore under her breath. Armstrong was looking confident.

And then something that Nija had never quite seen before happened between Nija and Charmander. Nija had been rifling in her pack again for a Potion, no doubt, when Charmander shakily pulled itself to its feet once more, shook out its scaly head and shot Nija a venomous glare. The girl had just removed a blue bottle from her pack and was about to head over to her Pokemon, and, catching sight of Charmander's death look, paused, looking bewildered. Charmander snorted a few burning embers at the ground as if scorning Nija's Potion, and turned its back on her, turning that icy teal gaze instead on its opponent.

"Charmander," Nija began, muttering so that Armstrong wouldn't be able to hear her from across the gym. Azrael and the others could hear her quite clearly, though. "You've got to be kidding me. You need to heal up!"

Charmander snorted yet again, and Nija hissed out, "Don't you give me that! I'm not making the same mistake twice."

The lizard whipped around to regard Nija again, and Azrael could have sworn that the glowing flame at the tip of its tail flickered, sputtered, and grew higher as it did so. The trainer and Pokemon were engaged in a silent battle of wills for a few moments, and Armstrong seemed to grow antsy.

"Come on, girl," he bellowed to her over the dusty, charred gym floor. "What's taking so long? It's your turn!"

Nija growled at Charmander to get over here _now_, but Charmander abruptly turned its back on Nija once again and stared down Geodude instead, who was looking grouchy and impatiently tired. "Charmander," Nija hissed. "Don't you dare… if you think I'm going to give you the order to attack, you're cr—"

But before Nija could even finish her sentence, Charmander had let loose a torrent of burning, quick-flying little flames, a considerable amount more than his first two attacks. Geodude writhed under the onslaught, attempting first to move out of the way, and then to shield itself with its rocky arms. Nija was shouting something Azrael couldn't hear, Charmander's attack was deafening and the temperature in the room was rising steadily—but suddenly, one noise rose above all the others.

_THUD._

It took Azrael a little while to realize what the source of the sound had been. She glanced warily over the gym floor, and noticed that Geodude was no longer floating in midair… and that there was a new, slightly different looking boulder laying face-down on the ground.

She had done it?

Nija's thoughts seemed to mirror her own. For a long moment, every eye was trained on Geodude, waiting to see if the Pokemon was really down for the count. Collective breaths were held, and Azrael caught movement out of the corner of her eye as Jason shakily moved forward to stand beside her and get a better look.

And then—Azrael's heart sank to her stomach—Geodude stirred. Nija seemed to deflate, and Charmander stiffened, the not-yet-grown spines in his shoulder blades shooting straight up in shock, much like the hackles of a dog rising. The living boulder pushed itself upright with its two chiseled arms, began to hover towards Charmander—and abruptly collapsed in a heap, upsetting a flurry of dust as it did so and laying still.

It was, unsurprisingly, Jason who broke the silence seconds later. He let out a strangled sounding whoop that quickly mutated into an all-out cheer as he leapt into the air and punched it fiercely. Orion, Azrael noticed, had lifted a shaking hand to his pale brow to mop away the sweat there, and now broke out into a wan smile of intense relief. Nija collapsed to her knees in the dust, staring blankly ahead at nothing in particular as Charmander sauntered sheepishly over to her and, after a paused, nudged her hand with its nose.

This seemed to snap Nija out of her reverie, and she blankly regarded her companion with no expression for a moment before scooping the creature up in her arms and positively throwing it up in the air to catch it once more, hollering just as Jason was.

"You disobedient, cheeky little devil, I _love you!_" Nija shouted, squeezing Charmander so tightly that the lizard began to squirm, desperate to escape the embrace.

Armstrong had made his way over to them, pausing to recall Geodude into his Pokeball. He paused while Nija went through her hysterics, and once he had the young trainer's attentions again, commented lightly, "Well, good job girl! You more than earned this," he tossed her a shining point of pewter grey, which she caught in one outstretched hand. "For being so uppity as to win a rematch in the same day!"

Nija muttered something incomprehensible—Azrael was having difficulties hearing over Jason's shouts, and the blond was still beating at the air around him as if it had slighted his mother. Orion laughed aloud suddenly, and Jason, alerted to his brother's presence, threw himself at him and began pounding him in the shoulder.

"She did it!" He crowed, and, catching sight of Nija approaching them, "You did it!"

The two engaged in a strange little victory dance and Azrael couldn't fight the smile from her face. Over Jason's head Orion caught her eye. She'd been standing off to the side of the festivities, taking it all in from a distance. Now, though, as she glanced up to meet his gaze, The taller of the two boys gave her such a grateful, fond, joyous grin then that Azrael could scarcely say that she'd have minded much even if the trip had to be delayed for another week.


	24. Chapter 24 Visora

Chapter 24

Visora felt like crap. After her confrontation with Ciara, she hadn't been able to get a wink of sleep. Elva had asked her what was wrong when Visora had finally dragged herself into their rundown room, stiff and cold, three hours later. Visora hadn't had the heart to tell her sister about the conversation she'd had outside, and instead made up some utterly transparent excuse about still being shaken up from the ghost experience. Elva obviously hadn't bought it—Visora would have seriously questioned her sister's intelligence if she had—but had left it at that, seeing that Visora blatantly didn't want to talk about it and gone to sleep.

It was the next morning, earlier than Visora usually woke up, but she figured that she might as well get an early start. She'd spent a _lot_ of time thinking, making quite a few decisions, and knew that it was going to be one _very_ long and trying day ahead of her.

She was unnecessarily quiet as she moved around the room searching for stationary and a pencil. Elva was the world's heaviest sleeper and Visora had a feeling she could conduct a full-fledged Pokemon battle, complete with blazing fire and flying rocks on the girl's bed without disturbing her. Still, it was force of habit. She pulled open a drawer and yanked out a sheet of green paper and began looping letters onto it. Visora was a compulsive list-maker, and today she had innumerable things to keep track of.

Things to buy at the PokeMart:

Potion—whatever type they have (6)

Pokeball—whatever type they have (4)

Antidote (4)

She paused and decided that was enough for today. She dragged her pen across the paper to divide it in two and carefully copied down new words.

Things to do today:

Map out Route

Shower and pack

Talk to Gaveriel and Ciara

The last one was by far the most daunting item on her list, the precise reason why Visora had saved it for last. She stuffed the bit of paper in her pocket and, leaving another quick note to Elva on her pillow, started out the door.

---------

Visora was pleased to find that the PokeMart was already open. She'd expected to have to wait for at least an hour for the manager to come. Inside she purchased her items in a hurry, as some guy that was standing behind her kept moving in too close. Thanking the clerk, she strode confidently out the door, projecting an air of cool indifference. Visora had a foolproof policy about men; she didn't trust them as far as she could throw them.

Gaveriel, however, seemed an entirely different breed. He was the first guy Visora could legitimately say she got along with, which was certainly saying something. Elva often expressed the concern that Visora would die an old maid—something that had Visora rolling her eyes and asking Elva why _she_ wasn't going all boy crazy. Elva would always answer the same thing: "I'm not getting a boyfriend until I know _you'll_ at least consider it, too."

Now Visora was outside and seriously considering forgetting the whole thing. There was no way she was going to _really_ go through with this—was she? Her heart was beating very hard suddenly, and she felt that if she didn't sit down she'd black out. Scrambling over to a bench, she put her paper bag down beside her and took deep, steadying breaths. _So, this is what an anxiety attack feels like?_ She thought to herself, wiping her brow with a shaking hand. _And I'm only thirteen, too._

Once Visora had gotten control of herself again she mentally ran through her argument again. She could go on like this for hours, carefully weighing pros and cons and waging a vicious war with herself.

_On one hand,_ she thought, _Elva really seems to like those two. It would make her exceptionally happy to go along with them._

_And on the other hand,_ a sharper, more harsh side of her snapped, _Elva wouldn't be so happy if the Rockets found us all and gutted her._

_Yet I've heard what they did to Ciara's family. What's to stop them from getting more powerful and striking her down if she gets in their way?_

_And remind me again, exactly_ how _would Elva cross Team Rocket? If we stay out of their way, we don't have anything to worry about._

_What about all the thousands of Pokemon they killed? What about innocent people like Gaveriel and Ciara's parents? Now that I know what they're doing and that the police were powerless to solve their murder, how can I just walk away?_

_And what about doing the_ smart _thing? All my life I've been trying to keep safe._

"And where has it gotten me?" Visora finished, standing up with conviction. "Where has playing it safe gotten me? Nowhere. Maybe I can actually do something worthwhile by helping them."

"Talking to yourself, little lady?" came a low voice from behind her. Visora fought every single impulse in her shot-system that was screaming at her to jump and scream. Instead, she clamped down on any sign of fear and turned around to face the man behind her coldly.

"Do I know you?"

"Not yet, anyway," he said, moving closer. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen from the looks of it, and slightly drunk. Visora crinkled her nose. _Drunk this early in the morning?_ _How utterly impractical. He's probably been up all night partying._

"Well, I'll be going, then." she said, getting up and grabbing the twisted-yarn handle of her bag. He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face him, and many things happened at the same time.

Visora reached into her pocket, clasped her hand around the Pokeball she knew to contain Oddish, and jammed on the button twice to let her comrade out. The man lurched forward to grab the Pokeball from her grasp, and a darkly tanned hand reached out and grabbed her attacker's arm, twisting it at an impossible angle.

It took Visora maybe two seconds to realize that Gaveriel had attempted to come to her rescue. Attempted, because Oddish had already begun whipping the guy ten different ways. Bruised and battered, he backed away with his hands up in the air, shouting, "Jesus, I was just playing around! Psychopaths!" before turning on his heel and half-jogging half-running off into the heart of the city.

Gaveriel and Visora regarded each other evenly. He was dressed down in a dark blue and brown flannel shirt and a pair of long jeans that made him look like a kid and an adult at the same time. His hair wasn't held in its usual ponytail and looked rather unkempt, as if he'd run out of the Center without bothering to get ready. Glancing behind his head she saw that her bench was in direct eyeshot of the window of the Pokemon Center—and she drew the only conclusion she could think of.

"So, you saw the creep through the window, then?"

"Saw you sitting on a bench like you were having some kind of episode first, _then_ saw the creep," he said, smiling softly and scratching at the side of his face. "But it seems as if you have everything handled, huh?"

"Thank you for coming out, anyway," she said, returning the smile and feeling suddenly small and insignificant. "Who would have thought creeps like that would hang around Lavender, huh? Doesn't seem like much of a party town."

Gaveriel laughed heartily. "Yeah, tell me about it. But, you're okay, right?"

Visora mildly noted that he'd just opened himself up for an attack of the dialogue kind. She could have easily taken offense to that and gone off into a "you think I need to be protected, big man?" branch, but honestly—that was the last thing Visora would even _think_ of doing to him now. She smiled instead and said, "I'm fine. I…" she winced as a flutter of anxiety beat in her chest. This was it, she thought. May as well get it over with now, even though it's the last thing on your list. "I needed to talk to you, though."

Gaveriel seemed confused, but nodded. "Okay—but can we go inside first? I don't know how you stand the morning air. 'Tis freezing."

She laughed and felt the anxiety loosen some. "I come from Celadon," she said blandly. "That place is absolutely sweltering with all the electricity we burn and all the warm bodies. The cold is more than welcome."

---------

After they had settled in at the Pokemon Center lobby again—Gaveriel with a cup of coffee, Visora with a cup of tea—she had to work her nerve up again. No matter how comfortable Gaveriel tried to make the atmosphere, she just couldn't seem to word it right. _Can we come with you? I've decided we'd like to come with you. If you wouldn't mind, we'd like to tag along._ All of them sounded ridiculous.

She was spared a few more blessed seconds when Gaveriel cleared his throat. She took the opportunity to take a sip of tea as he spoke. "If this is about your conversation with Ciara last night, she told me about it already."

Visora almost spit the tea out. Coughing, she said, "Oh—she did, did she?" Unable to come up with anything else, she waited uncertainly for him to continue.

"I'm sorry that she followed you outside—it would have been better to leave you alone to think, but hey; that's Ciara for you. She really does like you, though. She wouldn't have bothered otherwise."

Inexplicably, a deep, fond sadness sprang up in Visora. _Lord Almighty,_ she thought to herself as she closed her eyes and shook her head. _I'm turning into a regular little ball of estrogen._ "She reminds me a lot of Elva, sometimes."

Gaveriel laughed. "They _are_ pretty similar, aren't they…?"

More silence. Visora knew that she'd been given the perfect segue way into the topic she was dreading, and grudgingly took the opportunity.

"Speaking of our talk yesterday," she said, and paused again. She took a quick sip and went on. "I've been doing some thinking—okay, well, a _lot_ of thinking. I want to—well, I want to know if there's anything Elva or I can do to help you and Ciara on your projects."

Now it was Gaveriel's turn to choke on his beverage. Swiping at a splatter of it that had somehow hit his cheek, he turned to face her with bewilderment written all over his face. "I thought you were adamantly against what we're doing…?"

"Well, I… I guess I was wrong." There it was, the three words Visora tried her best to _never_ say: I was wrong. It wasn't that she would refuse to admit it when she _was_ mistaken—it was just that she did her damnedest to make 100 certain she never _was._ Now that she was openly admitting it to Gaveriel she felt like withering up into a crumpled heap of ashes. "I guess I never really stopped to think about much but my own plans. Team Rocket seems a bit more important than that, now. I don't want to just go on with my life knowing that you and Ciara are doing this thing for society completely alone—I want to have some part in helping, even if it's just writing things down, or something else utterly dumb like that." She smiled. "Although I can understand if you'd rather work alone."

Gaveriel had an unreadable expression on. Visora wasn't sure if he was angry, sad, happy, confused, or thoughtful. Then, he smiled. "Well, I'm sure it would make Elva and Ciara quite happy," he said, chuckling, a slight twinkle in his eyes.

Visora laughed. "Oh, that's for sure. Elva'll be downright depressed if we go our separate ways again."

"Well, I guess we can't have that happen, now, can we?" he got up and stretched out his neck, popping it expertly. "I'll talk to Ciara when she wakes up."

"And I'll do the same with Elva," Visora said, following suit and downing the last of her tea. Gaveriel was starting off for his room when an impulse struck Visora hard and she called after him, "We won't let you down!"

Surprised at herself, she was even _more_ shocked when he turned around and gave her the biggest grin she'd seen from him yet. "I know you won't."

---------

Of course, their two sisters had taken it precisely the way they thought they would. Elva positively _leapt_ out of her seat and latched onto Visora's midsection, which caused the two of them to topple over into a heap on the floor. Ciara had beamed and socked Gaveriel—hard—in the arm and said that she knew he'd give in some day. Then she and Visora had locked eyes for one shaky moment, and an unspoken agreement was made; they wouldn't talk about their conversation last night any more, and would move on as if it hadn't happened. Relieved, Visora allowed Elva to dance around the room with her—or, more like, had allowed Elva to dance and herself to be dragged around from place to place.

When Gaveriel and Ciara finally managed to calm Elva down, the four of them sat at the same table, sipping their various flavors of milkshake, and took part in the strangest planning procedure Visora had ever seen.

Gaveriel whipped out an old, battered Town Map with part of the lower right hand corner missing. All over the thing were little red dots—Rocket locations, Visora figured—and was confirmed to be correct when Gaveriel said the same thing a second later.

"Alright, we've already been to the ones that have the black spot in the middle," Visora saw that roughly a quarter of the spots were filled in this manner, "And the rest of these are up for grabs. Oh, wait," he said, pulling a felt-tipped pen out of the pocket of his shirt and marking a new spot in a red circle just outside Lavender Town. "That's where we've been holed up for the past few months. Nothing there, at least, not that we've found."

"Amen to that," Ciara said, nodding in approval. "'Bout bleeding time."

"The next one I'm looking for is a rigged game shop," Gaveriel said, and Visora got a distinctly bad feeling in her gut. "It's been run by Rockets for _ages_ but no one seems to be able to find out any kind of dirt on them. They stopped trying a few years back and ever since then the Rockets have been free to swindle more cash out of people with those rigged slot machines. Who knows _what_ they're using the cash for—they could be setting up a Pokemon black market for all we know."

Ciara looked intensely interested. "This is a big heist, isn't it, Gav? Shouldn't we start off with something, I don't know…" she cast a sidelong glance at Visora and Elva and the world "easier" died on her tongue, replaced instead with "closer?"

Gaveriel pretended to not catch the undertones in her voice. "Well, Celadon isn't that far of a walk from here, actually. We'll take the conventional path through Lavender to save on our energy, stop to restock and rest in Saffron, and take Route out and be in Celadon in no time flat. I give it about two weeks, tops."

Visora groaned audibly, earning her the attentions of her three comrades. "Problem?" Gaveriel asked.

"No, no… just… well, just promise me we can stay as _far_ away from the Celadon City Department Store as humanly possible. I'm good to go if we can do that."

"Relatives?" Ciara asked, taking a wild stab in the dark.

Visora nodded, grim. "You betcha. Aunt Margaret."

Now it was Elva's turn to groan. "Aw God, no," she muttered, holding her face in her hands. "We gotta avoid her."

Gaveriel laughed, a rich sound that filled the room. "Okay, okay, I won't ask. It's a deal. If we have to restock on anything Ciara and I will go in and you two can stay at the Center. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said the three voices in unison.

---------

That night, Visora lay awake again. It was the second night in a row now that she couldn't seem to force her eyes shut. Beside her, Elva was breathing deeply and kicking off her covers. When they were younger, Visora would get up and re-tuck her sister until she discovered that Elva really _didn't_ get cold at night the way Visora did.

Thinking about those times brought forth a new wave of apprehension within her. Was she really giving all that up just to travel with two strangers? And yet, the second she thought that, she knew it was far from the truth. She felt that she'd acted rashly, but in all honesty, the decision had been benefiting all of them. She wasn't sure where these bouts of insomnia were coming from—she'd resolved the issues with Ciara and Gaveriel, made her sister immensely happy and started on a new part of her life that promised to have actual meaning.

Then why was it that she couldn't squelch the growing feelings of dread in her gut?


End file.
